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I Elements of the History 
of the English Language 

INDELOF- GARRETT 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

00011302702 i 




Copyright^?- 



COPMtlGHT DEPOSITV 



University of WashingtonPublicationsinEnglish 
Volume I 



Elements of the History of the 
English Language 



Elements of the History of the 
English Language 



bv 
Uno Lindelof, Ph. D. 

Professor of the English Language and Literature 
University of Helsingfors 



translated by 
Robert Max Garrett, Ph. D. (Munich) 

Instructor in English 



University of Washington, 1911 



Y 



Copyrighted 1911 
By Robert Max Garrett 



Printed by the Department of Journalism 
University of Washington 



©GI.A289868 



Translator's Preface 



In translating Professor Lindelof 's GRUND- 
DRAGEN AF ENGELSKA SPRAKETS HISTO- 
RISKA LJUD- och FORMLaRA from the Swed- 
ish, I place one of the most concise and careful- 
ly selected histories of the English language 
within the reach of a greater number of students 
of English. The book was written in 1895 as 
a summary of the leading facts in the history 
of English, for the use of University students 
who were preparing for examination; the 
author has thoroughly revised and rewritten 
portions of the work for the translation. 

It will be noticed that comparatively few 
examples are taken from languages other than 
German. Anyone who has attempted using a 
book filled with citations from various lan- 
guages, with undergraduate students, will at 
once see the advantage of this. 

A noteworthy feature is the careful, scholarly, 
simple analysis of the foreign influences in 
Chapter III., and the rise of Standard English 
in Chapter IV. No American will object that 
the norm is the cultivated pronunciation of 
London. 



The book is not intended to supplant a be- 
ginning book in Old English, but rather to sup- 
plement such grammatical works as Professor 
Cook's First Book in Old English, or Professor 
Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader, etc. 

But the great charm which places the book 
in a class of its own, and which should make 
it a most grateful addition to the list of college 
texts, is its brevity. It seems to solve the diffi- 
culty with which each teacher of Old English 
is confronted, that of finding a text which is of 
proper size to use in an ordinary College course 
in Old English without infringing too much 
upon time which belongs more particularly to 
grammatical study and to reading. 

ROBERT MAX GARRETT. 



Seattle, Washington, May, 1911. 



Contents 



Chapter I. Introduction. Position of 
English in the Indo-European Family of 
Languages 16-36 

Chapter II. Old English 37-60 

Chapter III. The Influence of Foreign 
Languages upon English 61-90 

Chapter IV. The Development of the 
English Language since the year 1100. .91-128 



I 



Introduction — Position of English in the 

Indo-European Family of 

Languages 



§1. In order rightly to understand the his- 
tory of the intellectual development of a people, 
it is necessary to study it in connection with 
the political history of that people. Nowhere 
does this appear more clearly than in the study 
of English culture and of the English language. 
The violent national struggles and the ceaseless 
conflicts between the diverse elements in the 
population, with which the earlier history of 
England has been filled, have aided mightily to 
upbuild those peculiarities which mark the Eng- 
lish language with such an individual stamp. 
Therefore, even in a brief account of the devel- 
opment of the language, the most noteworthy 
facts in the history of Great Britain must be 
kept in mind. 

§2. At the beginning of the Christian era, 
the British isles were inhabited by a people 
which belonged to the Celtic group and which 
spoke various Celtic dialects. In earlier times, 
the Celts spread over a great part of western Eu- 
rope; later, greatly reduced in numbers, they fell 
back before the conquering races, or, as in the 
case of France, exchanged their own language 
for a strange one. In our own day, the number 
of Celts is very small, and it seems as if the 



16 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

complete extermination of the Celtic languages 
were but a question of time. However, of late 
there have been signs of a livelier literary ac- 
tivity among Celts of Great Britain and Ireland. 
The Celtic languages form a group in the 
great family of the Indo-European languages. 
The nearest relatives are, on the one side, the 
Italic languages, on the other side, the Ger- 
manic. The Celtic languages, 1 of which we 
possess some knowledge, may be divided into 
three chief groups: 

1. The Gallic language, which is known to us 
only through proper names and citations in 
Greek and Roman authors, and through coins 
and inscriptions. The interpretation of these 
is in part uncertain; besides, they are so scanty, 
that philologists have little to gain from them. 
Gallic is the only Celtic language of the main- 
land of which we know anything. 

2. The British language, in which we are ac- 
customed to include Cymric (Welsh), Cornish 
and Breton. Cornish was spoken in Cornwall, 
but died out about the year 1800. Welsh is 
spoken in Wales, and Breton in Brittany, whose 
Celtic inhabitants were brought over from Brit- 
ain at the beginning of the Middle Ages. The 
earliest form of this language known to us is 
found in glossaries from the 8th or 9th century 
A. D. 

3. The Gaelic languages, which are divided 
into Irish, Highland Scotch (or Gaelic in the 
narrower sense) and Manx, i. e. the language 
of the Isle of Man. Manx has been known to 
us for a few centuries only; on the other hand, 
we have Irish and Scotch texts of considerable 



1) Cf. Brugmann, "Kurze vergleichende Grammt tik der 
indo-germanischen Sprachen," p. 12. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 17 

antiquity. Some inscriptions may date as far 
back as about 500 A. D. In the oldest times, 
Irish and Scotch were practically the same lan- 
guage. 

§3. In connection with his wars in Gaul, 
Julius Caesar made two military expeditions 
into Britain (55 and 54 B. C), which, however, 
did not lead to the conquest of the land. Not 
until the time of the Emperor Claudius was 
the conquest begun, and Agricola (78-84 A. D.) 
extended the Roman power as far as the Forth 
and Clyde. 1 Roman civilization quickly fol- 
lowed the Roman sword: trade blossomed, a 
network of roads was built, cities like York and 
Lincoln formed centres for the new civilization, 
and London won even then no small importance 
in commerce. Numerous relics from the Roman 
times bear witness to the luxury which had 
developed among the wealthier classes. But it 
seems — how little we know of social conditions 
in ancient Britain! — that the position of the 
lower classes must not have been enviable. A 
sharp distinction gradually grew up between 
the Roman masters and the Romanized popu- 
lation in the larger cities, on the one side, and 
the Celtic population in the country, on the 
other. We must admit, however, that the ques- 
tion of the extent to which the Latin language 
was used in Britain, and the degree to which 
the land was Romanized, is most difficult to 
answer, and is a matter upon which the views 
of scholars differ widely. 

§4. The civilized Britons, who had gradually 
lost their warlike qualities, had to bear the 



1) Cf. to this and the following 1 , Green, "Short History 
of the English People," p. 5ff. A more recent full account 
of the earlier history of England is Hodgkin, "The History 
of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest." 



18 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

fierce attacks of their northern neighbors, the 
Picts. These attacks were repulsed successfully 
so long as the Roman military was quartered 
in Britain. But in the year 409, Rome recalled 
her legions to defend her against Alaric and 
his Visigoths, and Britain was left without pro- 
tection. At first she was successful in guarding 
herself against the invading Picts, but when the 
Picts received reinforcements from Ireland, and 
when internal discord broke out in Britain, and 
pirates began to harry the coasts, it looked 
dark for the British. Then they took a fatal 
step. A tradition, the truth of which is not 
above suspicion, says that the Britons, by prom- 
ises of land and money, induced a large number 
of German pirates to land in the southeast of 
Britain, to wage war against their northern 
enemies. This happened, according to the testi- 
mony of tradition, in the year 449, yet this date 
is probably a little late. Quickly enough the Brit- 
ons saw the folly of this step. The German allies, 
it is true, beat back the Picts, but after winning 
the victory, they turned their weapons against 
the Britons themselves, and began to extend their 
conquests westward and northward. Numerous 
reinforcements from the Germanic mainland 
arrived and resistance on the part of the British 
was at length seen to be in vain. While on the 
continent the Germans — Franks, Burgundians, 
Lombards — had fought to divide the tottering 
world-empire of Rome among themselves, and 
had settled as lords among their Romanized 
subjects, and after a few centuries had adopted 
the language of their subjects, the conquest of 
Britain was far more radical. Many Britons 
fell, many were forced back into the mountain- 
ous land of Wales and Cornwall. Those who 
survived and were left behind in the conquered 
land, seem to have lost their nationality very 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 19 

quickly, and to have become assimilated in the 
mass of the conquerors. This conquest, there- 
fore, forms a turning point in Britain's destiny. 
The land, once Celtic, becomes now Germanic, 
Britain becomes England, and the history of 
the English people begins. 

§5. Who were these Germans, that took 
England in possession, and where did they come 
from? These questions can, at present, find 
no fully satisfactory answer, and we cannot here 
enter into a discussion of the hypotheses which 
scholars have advanced concerning the home 
of the English and of the tribes most nearly 
related to them on the Continent. Linguistic, 
as well as historical testimony proves that the 
Germanic conquerors of England formed no 
homogeneous mass, but a group of several dis- 
tinct, though certainly nearly related tribes. 1 The 
well-known Old English ecclesiastic, the vener- 
able Bede (f735), names in his Historia eccle- 
siastica geniis Anglorum I, 15, as the colonizers 
of England, Angles, Saxons and Jutes. He gives 
as the original home of the Angles, "Angulus" 
in southern Schleswig. Concerning the conti- 
nental home of the other tribes, we have no 
historic accounts. A hypothesis frequently ad- 
vanced, is that the Saxons came from the land 
between the Elbe and the Rhine, and the Jutes 
from North Schleswig. The Jutes seem to have 
taken possession of Kent, the Isle of Wight, and 
that part of Hampshire next to the island. The 
Saxons occupied the banks of the Thames and 
the rest of Southern England. Their names 
appear in the shire-names: Essex, Middlesex, 
Sussex, and in Wessex. The rest of the land, as 
far as the Germanic conquest extended, was col- 



1) Cf. Kluge, "Geschichte der englischen Sprache," in 
Paul's Grundriss, 2nd Ed., I., p. 928ff. 



20 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

onized by the Angles. — The several subdivisions 
of the chief tribes will be treated when we dis- 
cuss the English dialects. Besides these names 
of the larger groups of the inhabitants of Eng- 
land, other names occur also, in documents, 
evidently names of smaller tribes which have 
been absorbed by the three greatest. 

§6. Englishmen have always called their 
language "English." This word, OE. englisc, is 
derived from the name of the Angles. Even 
Bede speaks of lingua anglica as that language 
which is spoken by the Germanic inhabitants of 
England; he uses the term lingua Saxonum only 
where he wishes especially to denote the Saxon 
language. A Kentish king in early times speaks 
of himself and his people as Angles, and Pope 
Gregory the Great uses the term Anglia for the 
whole land. In OE. writings the name Englisc 
is always used, e. g., in the works of Alfred 
the Great. It is true that not seldom the term 
lingua saxonica occurs in Latin writings. As to 
the name Anglo-Saxon, in the oldest times it 
is found only in charters and one questions 
whether it be really considered a name for the 
people and not rather a legal term? For all 
these reasons it is best to give to the language of 
England even of the oldest period, that name 
which it bears today. Thereby, that false 
idea — yet present — is dispelled, according to 
which the English language after the Norman 
Conquest was an essentially different language 
from Anglo-Saxon. Consequently, we speak of 
Old-English, Middle-English and Modern-Eng- 
lish, in the same way as in German we speak of 
an Old High, a Middle High and a Modern High 
German. 

§7. In the year 597, Christianity was intro- 
duced into England by Pope Gregory the Great's 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 21 

envoy, St. Augustine. Not without long strife 
and stubborn resistance did it succeed in mak- 
ing way for itself. But it seems that, having 
found entrance, it struck deep root, which is 
sufficiently evident from the religious character 
of a great part of the Old English literature. 

England's early history is full of strife and 
restlessness. Scarcely had the conquest of the 
land been completed, before discord manifested 
itself in the small states which had been formed, 
and among which three, especially, played an 
important role, viz.: the kingdom of the West 
Saxons, and Mercia and Northumbria, founded 
by the Angles. The leadership was held first by 
one, then by another of these three states. 
Periods of bloody war alternate with calmer 
and happier times when culture reached a 
higher stage, churches and monasteries were 
founded, literary occupations were pursued in 
the monastic schools. Northumbria especially, 
about the year 700, presents a pleasing picture. 
That was the scene of Bede's wonderful activity, 
whose teaching and writing embraced all of the 
learning known to the times. Students, eager 
for knowledge, streamed to the schools of North- 
umbria, not only from all England, but from 
the Continent as well. At the same time a na- 
tional poetry arose. A great part of the poetical 
literature which we possess in OE., is without 
doubt of Northumbrian origin, although it 
comes to us in a mixed dialect, based on a copy 
of the originals made by WS. scribes. Internal 
and external misfortunes put an end to this 
brilliant period in Northumbria, and new times 
of confusion followed, until finally Ecgberht of 
Wessex, in the year 827, forced into subjection 
all the Mercian and Northumbrian kingdoms, 
which were now fallen into anarchy, and united 
Angles and Saxons under one sceptre. 



22 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

§8. The weakness of the English states was 
not due to their lack of unity alone; enemies be- 
gan to harry them from outside. As the Angles 
and Saxons had harassed the Britons with pira- 
cy, so now they were in their turn frightfully be- 
set by the Scandinavian Vikings. About the year 
\ 3 these Vikings made their first raids, only 
to return later, plundering and harrying in con- 
stantly increasing crowds. They came from 
Denmark and Norway; the English called them 
without distinction Danes, Dene, or heathen. 
The Scandinavian languages were in all proba- 
bility still very similar to one another. For sev- 
eral decades the Vikings contented themselves 
with plundering and harrying and taking home 
what booty they had won. But in the middle of 
the ninth century they changed their policy and 
began to settle in England as conquerors and 
colonizers. Their numbers were quickly in- 
creased and they were everywhere victorious 
in war. First Northumbria fell before them, and 
somewhat later Mercia acknowledged the Dan- 
ish overlordship. 

§9. In 871, Alfred, the grandson of Ecgberht, 
became king of Wessex. He ascended the 
throne under disheartening conditions. Of his 
ancestral kingdom, but a small part remained, 
and enemies from without pressed forward 
from every side. Through extreme caution and 
acuteness, Alfred succeeded in keeping the 
Northmen at a distance for several years, and 
finally, with his collected forces, defeated them 
in a battle which led to the Peace of Wedmore 
(878). The Danish leader, Guthrum, was con- 
verted to Christianity and received as a fief 
the whole of Northern and Eastern England, 
which was then called the Danelaw. During the 
remainder of Alfred's reign, England enjoyed 
a practically uninterrupted peace. Alfred is 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 23 

one of History's noblest rulers. He was warmly 
zealous for his people's spiritual welfare, and 
worked unceasingly for the improvement of the 
mother-tongue and of the national culture. Of 
greatest importance is his activity as the trans- 
lator of well-known Latin manuals, in which 
he was assisted by several prominent chur. - 
men. From Alfred's circle come, among others, 
the OE. translations of Orosius' History of the 
World, Pope Gregory's Cura Pastoralis, Boeth- 
ius' Be Consolatione Philosophiae and Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History of the English People. 
Hereby he laid the foundations for English 
prose, and raised West Saxon to England's liter- 
ary dialect. In his interesting Preface to the 
translation of the Cura Pastoralis, the king gives 
expression, in simple, warm words, to his noble 
zeal for the uplifting of his people. 

§10. Alfred died in 901. His successors ruled 
over Wessex during the tenth century with vary- 
ing fortunes, and made their influence more or 
less felt in the Danelaw. Under King Aethelred 
the Unready, the Scandinavians, with fresh 
hordes, began again to visit the English coast. 
Yet the English succeeded in holding their own 
against them, until the king in a sudden panic 
consented to a massacre of the Danes in Wessex 
(1002). The part played by this occurence, 
which tradition has probably exaggerated, is 
hard to determine. It is a fact however, that 
the Scandinavian forces grew in strength until 
at last King Swein led a great army of invasion 
into England and, after a long bloody contest, 
conquered all of England, and at his death left 
the land to his son Canute (1016-1035). Canute 
was in many respects an eminent ruler and 
by his mildness and justice made the people 
forget the violence of the conquest. His reign 
was therefore a happy time for England, but 



24 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

during the reigns of his sons, a violent civil war 
broke out and after their death (1042) a national 
restoration followed, in that Aethelred's son, 
Edward the Confessor, was called as king from 
Normandy, where he had spent his boyhood. 
He lived in folk-tradition as a saint, but he was 
really an extremely weak person, entirely de- 
pendent upon his Norman favorites. His for- 
eign tastes awakened a general anger in Eng- 
land; discontent broke out, and the greatest 
power came into the hands of Earl Godwin, 
and after his death into those of his son, Harold. 
When Edward died (1066), Harold was crowned 
King of England, but his reign was brief. News 
of his accession caused great amazement in Nor- 
mandy. For a long time the warlike Duke Wil- 
liam had cast longing glances toward England, 
and had followed its internal contentions with 
interest. He affirmed that he had received a 
promise of the English throne from Edward the 
Confessor, and hastened to enforce his claim. 
With a great host he sailed across the Channel 
and completely defeated the English on the 14th 
of October, 1066, at Senlac (Hastings). Harold 
was killed and William became the master of 
England. This Norman Conquest gives an en- 
tirely new direction to English history. A new 
element of population, the Norman-French, is 
brought into the land to live an independent 
life for several centuries, but later to be gradu- 
ally fused with the English to one nation. We 
shall speak later of the consequences of the Con- 
quest and its effect upon the English language, 
and shall now pass to an account of the position 
of that language in the group of languages 
whereof it forms a part. 

§11. The English language is a Germanic 
language. The Germanic languages form one 
division of the Indo-European or Aryan Ian- 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 25 

guages. The primitive language of the Indo- 
Europeans is unknown to us; only by comparison 
between the languages which compose the fam- 
ily, can scholars reconstruct, with more or less 
certainty, the primitive Indo-European words 
and word-forms. The subject of the interrela- 
tionships of the Indo-European languages has 
been variously understood and conceived by the 
various scientists. While some have attempted 
to rear a genealogical tree for the languages in 
question, that is, the language-groups were de- 
picted as taking the form of a tree with its 
branches, other scholars have done homage to 
another view, the so-called Wave theory (Wel- 
lentheorie), or the theory of continuous transi- 
tions and contacts between a language and its 
nearest relatives on either side. 1 Among other 
things, the modern investigation of dialects is re- 
garded as a strong support for the latter theory. 
According to this theory, the relation of the lan- 
guages is conceived in the form of a chain, 
where each link is intimately connected with 
the neighboring links. Many of the languages 
derived from the Indo-European mother-tongue 
have doubtless disappeared without leaving a 
trace; the links in the chain which are known 
to us from more or less abundant sources, are 
eight in number. Their order is as follows: 
1. the Aryan languages, 2. Armenian, 3. Greek, 
4. Albanese, 5. the Italic languages, 6. Celtic, 
7. Germanic and 8. the BaltoSlavic languages. 
However, against even the "Wave theory" 
serious charges can be made, and science cannot 
be said to have come to a uniform conception 
of this difficult problem. One fact seems certain 
— the different treatment of the Prim. Indo- 
European palatal stops goes back to very primi- 



1) Cf. Johannes Schmidt, "Die Verwandtschaftsverhaelt- 
nisse der indogermanischen Spraclien." 



26 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

tive times. In such a case a division of the Indo- 
European languages into two chief groups 
would be advisable. To the one group (which 
has been called cenfwm-languages) would be- 
long the Greek, Italic, Celtic and Germanic lan- 
guages; to the other (sat em-languages), the 
Aryan, Armenian, Albanian and Balto-Slavic 
languages. 1 

§12. The ARYAN group consists of the Indian 
and Iranian languages. We see the oldest form of 
the Indian language in the hymns of the Veda, 
of which some go back to more than a thousand 
years B. C, possibly still earlier. Closely re- 
lated to the language of the Veda is the language 
which goes under the name of Sanscrit (Classic), 
and which possesses an enormously rich litera- 
ture. Still other dialects are known to us from 
early times. The modern Indian dialects are 
particularly numerous. The Iranian languages 
consist in ancient times of Old Bactrian 
or Avestan, the language of the Zend Avesta, and 
Old Persian, represented by many cuneiform 
inscriptions. Of the modern Iranian languages, 
none are to be considered as direct continua- 
tions of the two old dialects. The Afghan lan- 
guage is related to Old Bactrian, while the mod- 
ern Persian dialects stand nearer to Old Persian. 

ARMENIAN has been known to us since the 
5th century A. D. The literary language, which 
was then well established, has held its own as 
such almost unchanged until our own time, and 
differs greatly from the dialects now spoken. 



1) "Centum" (pr. kentum) is the word for the number 
one-hundred in Latin, "satem," in Avestan; the initial conso- 
nant is to be referred to a Prim. Indo-Europ. palatal "k" and 
the names show that in the one group it remains a stop, 
in the other it becomes a spirant. Cf. Brugmann, "Kurze 
vergleichende Grammatik," p. 157; Hirt, "Die Indo-German- 
en s " I., p. 95; Streitberg^ "Urgermanische Grammatik," p. 9. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 27 

GREEK comes to us separated into many dia- 
lects. Toward the close of the 5th century B. C, 
a standard literary language was formed with 
the Attic dialect as a basis, and somewhat later 
a standard spoken language was developed, 
which practically replaced the old dialects, but 
which later, in its turn, was broken up into 
different folk-dialects. The literature of the 
Byzantine empire is written in a language which 
is the result of the disproportionate blending of 
the old literary language and the contemporary 
dialect of the people. The numerous Modern 
Greek dialects have not yet been thoroughly in- 
vestigated, but seem to offer a rich and promis- 
ing field for linguistic investigation. The differ- 
ence is very great between the spoken language 
of modern Greece and the written language, 
which is highly archaic. 

ALBANESE has been known to us only since 
the 17th century. This language, which is very 
much mixed with foreign elements, has been 
investigated only in very recent years. 

The ITALIC languages in ancient times em- 
braced the Umbrian-Samnitic (or Oscan- 
Umbrian) dialects and Latin. The former are 
known to us through inscriptions, for the most 
part dating from the last centuries B. C. They 
were gradually superseded by Latin. This lan- 
guage we know from about the year 300 B. C. 
Very early the cleft between the popular lan- 
guage in Rome and the strictly regulated 
language of literature had become very great. 
Although this literary language held itself prac- 
tically unchanged through the course of centu- 
ries, dialects quickly developed, especially after 
the Roman colonization spread Latin over vast 
territories. In later times several of these dia- 
lects were raised to the dignity of national Ian- 



28 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

guages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, 
Roumanian, etc., i. e. the so-called Romance 
languages. 

For the CELTIC languages, see p. 16. For the 
GERMANIC, see below. 

The RALTO-SLAVIC group is divided, as the 
name signifies, into two chief divisions. The 
Baltic languages include Old Prussian, which 
died out in the 17th century, and which is known 
to us only through very meagre texts, together 
with Lithuanian and Lettic, both still spoken 
and both known to us since the 16th century. 
The Slavic languages may be divided into two 
chief divisions. To the Southeastern group be- 
long Russian, Servian and Rulgarian and others ; 
to the Western group belong Rohemian (Tchech- 
ish), Polish, etc. The oldest known form of 
Slavic is the so-called Church Slavic — generally 
identified with Old Rulgarian — that is, the lan- 
guage which the missionaries Cyrillus and Meth- 
odius (9th century) made use of, and which 
in a somewhat altered form is still used in the 
Orthodox Greek services in Russia. 

§13. The GERMANIC languages, then, have 
their place in the Indo-European complex be- 
tween the Celtic and the Ralto-Slavic languages 
and have certain peculiarities common to both 
of these, which we cannot discuss here. 1 The 
Primitive Germanic language we do not know. 
The Germanic language comes down to us di- 
vided into many dialects. If we except those 
dialects which we know only from proper 
names, quotations from classic authors, and 
other scanty sources, such as the language of 
the Vandals, Langobards, Rurgundians and 



1) The features common to Germanic and Balto-Slavic 
have been attacked by several scholars. See Hirt, "Die 
Indo-Germanen," L, p. 97. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 29 

Ostrogoths, the old Germanic languages 
group themselves into six divisions, namely; 
Gothic, High German, Low German, 1 Frisian, 
English and Scandinavian. Among the pecu- 
liarities which characterize the Germanic lan- 
guages as a whole, should be mentioned first 
of all, the change in a large portion of the con- 
sonantal system, which is called the First Sound 
Shift. 

The mutual relationships of the Germanic 
languages have been the subject of widespread 
research and the investigators have not all ar- 
rived at the same results in the matter. While 
Jacob Grimm assumed a close relationship be- 
tween High German and Gothic, Schleicher unit- 
ed into one group High and Low German, Fri- 
sian and English, but excluded the Scandinavian 
languages. The more recent scientific works 
agree in uniting High and Low German, Frisian 
and English in a so-called WEST GERMANIC 
group. However, the views differ with regard 
to the other Germanic languages. For a long 
time it was the universal custom to unite Gothic 
and the Scandinavian languages in an EAST 
GERMANIC group, and even today some schol- 
are make much of the peculiarly close relation 
of these languages. 2 It is, however, more usual 
to separate these languages and to see in Gothic, 
together with a few languages of which we 
know only a little, an EAST GERMANIC group, 
and in the Scandinavian languages, a NORTH 
GERMANIC group. 3 However, here among 



1) By this term we designate Low German proper, the 
most important form of which is Old Saxon, and Old Low 
Franconian from which Dutch has developed. 

2) See Hirt, "Die Indo-Germanen," I., p. 173. 

3) This triple division is accepted by many of the text- 
books in general use, as: Streitberg, "Urgermanische Gram- 
matik"; Brugmann, "Kurze vergleichende Grammatik"; Buel- 
bring, "Altenglisches Elementarbuch"; J. & M. Wright, "Old 
English Grammar"; Kaluza, "Historische Grammatik der 
englischen Sprache." 



30 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

the Germanic languages, also, it is seen to be 
impossible to divide the groups sharply one 
from the other, for there are points of contact 
and transitions between the different groups, 
or, now and then, between languages belonging 
to widely separated groups. The North Ger- 
manic languages may be said, in a certain sense, 
to take a middle place between the two other 
groups. 1 If one holds to the Wave theory, 
and arranges the Germanic languages in a 
closed chain, the order of the links will be: 
Gothic — Scandinavian — English — Frisian — Low 
German — High German— (Gothic) . 

At any rate we ought to have clearly before 
us the fact that such names as East and West 
Germanic are not names of separate ethno- 
graphic groups, but that purely linguistic rela- 
tions are meant thereby. It seems that the 
distinction between the East and the West Ger- 
manic languages was fully formed in the 2nd 
century A. D., but the Germans had separated 
into tribes much earlier. Linguistic coincidences 
do not always prove a close blood relationship, 
but often rest on merely external geographical 
or historical relations; still, long afterward, 
when the Germans were spread over a vast ter- 
ritory in Europe, we see linguistic changes 
somehow wander from tribe to tribe. The laws 
for the treatment of final sounds of a word, 
which have so greatly changed the appearance 
of the Germanic words, seem to have been 
formed about 200-300 A. D. None the less, they 
have extended their influence even to the utter- 
most confines of the territory where Germanic 
languages were spoken. 

§14. Let us illustrate the above by examples. 
The most important facts upon which we can 



1) Streitberg, "Urgermanische Grammatik." 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 31 

base the assumption of a nearer relationship 
between two or more languages of the same 
family, are changes in which both participate; 
the fact that two languages have preserved 
archaisms in common is of much less impor- 
tance. Now if we compare the East and West 
Germanic languages in this respect, we find that 
all the West Germanic languages show certain 
radical changes in cases where Gothic and 
Norse retain the original forms. Thus the W. G. 
languages have only one form for the Norn, 
and Ace. Plur, in the Strong Masc. :OHG. fiska, 
OSax. fiscos, Fris. fiska (r), OE. fiscas; Gothic, 
however, N. Plur. fiskos, Ace. fiskans; ON. 
fiskar-fiska. Further, all the WGerm. lan- 
guages have replaced the old form of the 2. 
Sing. Ind. Strong Pret. in -t (Goth. ON. gaft, thou 
gavest), by a form in -i (-e) ; OHG. gdbi, OE. 
geafe. The WGerm. group is further distin- 
guished by a whole series of changes in the final 
sounds of words and by syncopations in which 
all participate. One of the most important of 
these changes is the WGerm. loss of a Prim. 
Germ, -z (Indo-Europ.-s) at the close of a word, 
which, however, in one form or another is re- 
tained in Gothic and Old Scandinavian lan- 
guages. Thus the Nom. Sing, of the word "day" 
has in Gothic the form dags, in ONorse, dagr, 
while in WGerm., the ending is lost; OHG. tag, 
OSax. dag, OE. d&g. 

The traits, not numerous, which are common 
to Gothic and ONorse, and which have led many 
scholars to combine the two languages in an 
East Germanic group, must be omitted here, 
since in discussing them, comparatively compli- 
cated questions of Germanic grammar must be 
explained. However, it has already been 
pointed out that Gothic and Norse have in some 
cases kept the peculiarities of Prim. Germ., 
where WGerm. has undergone changes. 



32 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

§15. To prove that, in perfect conformity to 
the Wave-theory, certain similarities are to be 
found between single languages belonging to 
different groups of the Germanic family, we 
may present the following: 

A Prim. Germanic stressed e occurs as e only 
in Gothic; ONorse, like WGerm., has in this case 
a; Gothic letan, (to let), ONorse, lata; Osax. Id- 
tan; OHG., lazzan. A Prim. Germ, medial z 
(voiced 5-sound) is preserved in Gothic, where- 
as ONorse and WGerm. languages have 
changed this sound to r: Goth, comparative 
batiza, ONorse betre, OHG. bezziro, OE. 
bet(e)ra. 

One point may be mentioned wherein English 
differs from the other WGerm. languages. They 
have introduced in the usual demonstrative pro- 
noun, "the," one and the same stem in all cases, 
while English, like Gothic and ONorse, has kept 
the two old stems. As in Sanscrit we decline: 
sas, sd, tat, Gen. tasya, etc., and in Greek: 6, fj 9 
to, Gen. tov 9 rijs, tov 9 etc., so Gothic has the forms 
sa, so, pata, Gen. pis, etc., ONorse, sd, sit, pat, 
Gen. pess, etc., and OE. se, seo, pset, Gen. pses, 
etc. On the contrary, the OHG. Nom. forms are 
der, diu, daz, OSax., the, thiu, that, Fris., thi, 
thiii, thet. 

Likewise we find an interesting similarity be- 
tween OHG., and the East and North Germanic 
languages, namely, in the plural of the verbs, 
separate forms have been preserved for the 
three persons, while OSax., Fris., and Eng., have 
only one form for the whole plural: e. g. Goth. 
finpam, we find, finpip; finpand; ONorse, finnom; 
-ep, -a; OHG., flndames, -et, -ant; OSax, has for 
the plural of the Pres. only findad; Fris. findath; 
OE. findap. 

These examples suffice to show that the theory 
of gradual transition has won some support in 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 33 

the history of the Germanic languages. But al- 
though agreements exist on one hand or the 
other, yet the West Germanic group shows 
strongly marked characteristics. It now concerns 
us to examine the position of English within 
this group. 

§16. The nearest relative of English on the 
continent is the Frisian. The agreements be- 
tween OE. and Frisian are so great that one 
might almost treat them as a single group, the 
Anglo-Frisian. 1 Frisian is divided into several 
dialects. The best sources for the study of the 
older Frisian are the old laws of the 14th cen- 
tury, or in part from the latter half of the 13th 
century. 

As an example of the agreement between OE* 
and Frisian may be taken the fact that in both 
languages Germ, a before m or n is represented 
by a or o : man or mon, nama or noma (name) ; 
but elsewhere in a closed syllable the same 
vowel undergoes an elevation of tone which is 
represented in Frisian by e, in the Eng. dialects 
by se or e; Fris. bek (back), OE. bsec (bee): 
Fris. brek (I broke), OE., brsee (brec), etc. As 
to the inflections, it should be mentioned that 
OE. as well as OFris. forms its 3rd pers. pro- 
noun Sing, and Plur. in all cases from a stem 
beginning with h : O. E. Nom. he, G. his, D. him, 
Ace. hine, Plu. N. A. hi(e), G. hira, D. him; 
Fris. hi, him, hine; hia, hira, him. OSax., on the 
contrary, uses various stems in inflecting this 
pronoun: he, is, imu, ina; sia, iro, im. In like 
manner OHG. uses forms from different stems. 
These examples suffice. The Frisian dialects 
are still incompletely investigated, but one may 
say with confidence that the historical study of 

1) Cf. Sweet, "History of English Sounds," section 294, 
and "New English Grammar," section 596; Streitberg, "Ur- 
germanische Grammatik," p. 14; Heuser, "Altfriesisches 
Lesebuch." 



34 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

English will reap a rich harvest from a thorough 
study of this near relative of the language of the 
Angles and Saxons. 

Next come the Low German dialects. We 
have mentioned the fact that Eng. and Frisian 
agree with them as opposed to High German, 
among other things, in that the plural of the 
verb has only one form Tor all three persons; 
for the rest, High Germ, is sufficiently character- 
ized by the so-called Second Sound Shift. From 
this the position of English in the Germanic lan- 
guage complex may be seen. 

§17. The history of the English language is 
usually divided into three periods. English and 
German offer many analogies in the course of 
their development, and many of the criteria 
upon which the division of the German language 
into periods are based are also of the greatest 
importance for English. As we speak of an Old, 
a Middle and a Modern form of the High Ger- 
man language, so we distinguish between an 
Old, a Middle and a Modern English language, 
(OE., ME., ModE.). It is naturally impossible 
accurately to fix a year as the boundary between 
the periods in the life of a language; one must 
be content with approximations of those peri- 
ods, which again may differ according to the 
changes which one considers of greatest impor- 
tance and most suitable as causes for a division. 

The Old English period, which we may call 
the Period of Full End-vowels — that is, we meet 
forms there as Nom. Plur. fiscas, G. Plur. fisca, 
D. Plur. fiscum, to Nom. Sing, fisc — extends to 
about the year 1100. The Norman Conquest, 
the importance of which for the development 
of English we shall attempt to explain in Chap. 
Ill, is not the direct, but the indirect cause of 
the changes which characterize the transition to 
the following period. Although the OE. literary 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 35 

language, which was based on the West Saxon 
dialect, had changed comparatively little be- 
tween 900-1100, yet the spoken language must 
have gradually advanced to a great sim- 
plicity in its inflectional system. Through 
the Conquest, the literary language lost its sig- 
nificance and was forgotten. Those who still 
made use of their mother-tongue for literary 
purposes began to write in close agreement to 
the spoken language; hence the seemingly sud- 
den development. The literary monuments of 
the Transitional period are especially interest- 
ing, e. g., the latter portions of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle and some of the later translations of 
biblical texts. 

The Middle English period — like the corre- 
sponding division in Germany — is characterized 
by the leveling of all the old suffix-vowels to a 
simple e. Certain other important changes in 
sound — and inflectional — relations distinguish 
ME. from OE. Then, too, the English vocab- 
ulary undergoes a radical change through the 
introduction of many loan-words. 

Concerning the most suitable division be- 
tween ME. and ModE., different proposals have 
been made. Sweet 1 sees in the fact of end-e 
becoming silent the most important criterion. 
This process began earliest in the Northern dia- 
lects, and begins in the Southern dialects short- 
ly after Chaucer (fl400). Sweet designates the 
period between 1400 or 1450 and 1500 as a Pe- 
riod of Transition, and lets Modern English be- 
gin with the 16th century. In opposition to 
this, Zupitza 2 has maintained that the fact that 
end-e became silent can furnish no suitable cri- 
terion for determining the close of a period, for 
the reason that it occurs in the different dia- 



1) "History of English Sounds." 

2) "Lectures held in the University of Berlin, 1888-1889! 1 



36 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

lects at different times. The best division be- 
tween ME. and Mod.E., he says, should be the 
year 1558, that is, the year of the accession of 
Elizabeth, for only since that time can one speak 
of a generally recognized Standard English. 
This date is, however, too late, and certain im- 
portant facts speak for the year 1500 as a good 
dividing line between ME. and ModE. Al- 
though the new common language which had 
gradually developed during the last century of 
the ME. period cannot be considered as definite- 
ly fixed at the year 1500, yet its victory was as- 
sured, and the conditions of literary produc- 
tion which were so altered by the introduction 
of the art of printing in the last two decades of 
the 15th century, seem to justify the choice of 
the year 1500 as a milestone in the history of the 
language as well. Consequently, the OE. period 
closes at the year 1100, the ME. period, at 1500. 



II 

Old English 



§18. Old English is not a uniform language, 
but comes to us in a number of dialects. History 
and tradition tell of three important Germanic 
tribes who took possession of England, and it is 
surely more than an accident that the OE. dia- 
lects, for many centuries after the Conquest, 
can be divided into three great groups. In these 
dialect-groups we must see later stages of de- 
velopment of those languages which were spok- 
en by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the time 
of the conquest of England. The Kentish 
dialect, which is spoken in the Southeast of 
England, is the language of the Jutes; there is 
really only one of the Saxon dialects, i. e., West 
Saxon (WS.), which is known to us in Old Eng- 
lish times through a rich literature; the Anglian 
territory embraces two main dialects: a south- 
ern, Mercian, and a northern, Northumbrian. 

Of these dialects, we see that the West Saxon 
is the most important; by virtue of its political 
prestige and of King Alfred's all-embracing ac- 
tivity in behalf of a national culture, it became 
in preference to the others a literary dialect. 
We have numerous sources for the study of WS., 
yet not so numerous as was formerly thought. 
That is, it was usual for the earlier grammari- 



38 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

ans to base their study of the principal dialect 
of Old England upon the numerous poetical 
texts. As a result of later investigations this 
idea had to be abandoned, as it was proved that 
these texts do not exhibit any pure dialect, but 
rather take up forms from the different dia- 
lects. The chief cause of this 1 is the fact that 
OE. poetry, for the most part, is of Anglian 
origin, but after the decay of the Anglian pow- 
er, it was preserved to posterity by West Saxon 
scribes who allowed their own dialect to ap- 
pear more or less in the copy. Therefore, these 
texts must be used with the greatest caution in 
linguistic investigations, especially in the study 
of sounds. The most important texts upon 
which the grammatical study of the different 
OE. dialects is based, are mentioned in the fol- 
lowing paragraphs. 

§19. We find pure WS. in the translations 
which were made by King Alfred himself, or 
under his supervision. The translations of Pope 
Gregory's Cura Pastoralis and of Orosius (both 
edited by Sweet) are of greatest importance. 
The older portions of that historical work which 
goes under the name of the Anglo-Saxon Chron- 
icle show in the main the same dialect as the 
translations of Alfred. Upon these and several 
other texts our knowledge of the older WS. of 
the time immediately before and after the year 
900 is based. The later WS., which undergoes 
several changes, is known to us chiefly from the 
many carefully written works of the prolific ab- 
bot Aelfric (about the year 1000), works for the 
most part on religious themes. Another impor- 
tant text coming from Aelfric's time is the WS. 
Translation of the Gospels. The oldest WS. of 
the time before Alfred is represented only by 



1) Cf. Sievers-Cook, "Old English Grammar," 3rd Ed., p. 
4; and Sweet, "History of English Sounds," section 351. 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 39 

proper names and by a few charters of which 
the oldest, according to Sweet, dates from the 
year 778. 

§20. Our knowledge of the other OE. dia- 
lects is derived from very scanty literary texts, 
from a large number of interlinear translations 
of Latin texts, from collections of glosses, and 
from more or less brief legal documents. 

The language of the Jutes, Kentish, in its old- 
est form, is represented by a great number of 
charters. We have the later Kentish in a large 
glossary from the close of the 10th century, as 
well as in the translation of a psalm and of a 
hymn of the same time. Tjhe so-called Epinal 
glossary, 1 a very important source for the his- 
tory of English, from about the year 700, was 
formerly considered to be Kentish; now, how- 
ever, the dialect of the Epinal glossary, as well 
as that of the contemporary Erfurt and Leyden 
glossaries and of the Corpus glossary, which is 
somewhat later, is considered in the main South 
Mercian, though with a mixture of Kentish and 
sometimes even WS. forms. 2 

Of the Anglian dialects, Mercian is repre- 
sented first by the important interlinear trans- 
lation of the Psalter, the so-called Vespasian 
Psalter, from the first half of the 9th century. 
The dialect of the interlinear version of the Gos- 
pel according to St. Matthew in the so-called 
Rushworth MS. (latter half of the 10th century) 
is impure Mercian. Then, too, a number of 
charters belong here. 

We know the older Northumbrian dialect 
from a number of Runic inscriptions, of which 
the most interesting is the inscription of the 



1) The "Epinal-Glossary," with a number of other im- 
portant texts, will be found in Sweet, "Oldest English Texts." 

2) Buelbring - , "Alteng-lisches Elementarbuch, ,, p. 8. 



40 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

Ruthwell Cross. Furthermore, we have some 
old Northumbrian poems, as Caedmon's Hymn 
and Bede's Death Song. The texts in later 
Northumbrian, from the second half of the 10th 
century, are especially voluminous. These texts 
are grouped into two clearly marked dialects, 
a northern, represented by the interlinear ver- 
sions of all the Gospels in the socalled Durham 
Book (or the Lindisfarne Gospels), together 
with the interlinear version of the Durham Rit- 
ual; and a southern, represented by the inter- 
linear translations of St. Mark, St. Luke and St. 
John in the Rushworth MS. 

In the following brief account of several of 
the chief points in OE. grammar, we confine 
ourselves mainly to WS., referring only casual- 
ly to peculiarities of the other dialects. 

§21. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought 
with them to England the Runic alphabet, 1 
which was common to all Germanic tribes. This 
Runic alphabet is, however, no invention of the 
Germans, but an adaptation of the Latin alpha- 
bet (according to others, of a type of the Greek), 
which adaptation was certainly to a great degree 
the result of the demands made by the writing 
materials (stone, wood, metals) which were in 
general use among the old Germans. From the 
period after the introduction of Christianity we 
find Runic inscriptions in England; 2 yet very 
soon the English adopted the Roman alphabet, 
in the form which obtained in Rritain. Thereby 
arose difficulties, for certain OE. sounds had no 
full equivalent in the Latin alphabet; that was 
the case with the sounds which in ModE. are de- 
noted by the letters w and th. The oldest Eng- 
lish MSS. seek to conform to the Latin letters 



1) Sievers, "Runen und Runeninschriften," in Paul's 
"Grundriss der germanischen Philolog'ie," I. 

2) All in Sweet's "Oldest English Texts." 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 41 

and to represent the former sound by u or iw f 
the latter, the interdental (or postdental) Spi- 
rant, by th. In the 9th century they began to 
introduce two Runic letters in writing for the 
consonants in question. The interdental spirant 
was then represented by J? (thorn), very often 
also by a d with the stem crossed, called eth. 
As for the rest of the OE. alphabet, it is worth 
mentioning that c is the sign of the A-sound in 
all positions; the letter A' is rare; oe is never 
written as one letter, whereas the ligature ae is 
one of the commonest signs in OE. writing. In 
many cases, however, the value of the OE. let- 
ters remains and only by comparison with re- 
lated languages and by observing the later de- 
velopment of the English language can it be 
determined. Vowel length is not denoted at all 
in most of the MSS., or at least most inconsist- 
ently. Where they have attempted to denote a 
long vowel, they have either doubled the vowel 
or used an accent. 

§22. The following account of OE. grammar 
must be limited to the most general features in 
the structure and development of the language. 
Here, as more particularly in the treatment of 
ME., the reader may get the impression that 
the details of the historical grammar of English 
have been worked out with greater certainty 
than is the case. We especially emphasize the 
fact, therefore, that many obscure points are to 
be found, and that many problems are still 
awaiting their solution. Yet the fundamental 
facts have been discovered and fixed by investi- 
gation, and it is only those main features which 
we shall delineate. 



42 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

1. OE. VOWELS. 

§23. The English vowels have always been 
distinguished by a great sensitiveness to influ- 
ence from neighboring sounds; the language 
shows a well-marked tendency to make diph- 
thongs of stressed long vowels and greatly to 
reduce vowels in unstressed syllables. 

In examining the OE. vowels in 
stressed syllables, let us begin with the 
various developments of the W Germ, a. 1 This 
sound, which, if we except the force of the /-um- 
laut, remains, in the main, unchanged in Ger- 
man, undergoes two sorts of changes in OE. In 
an originally closed syllable, WGerm. a ap- 
pears in OE. as se, e. g., dseg, day; Germ. Tag; 
pse]>, path, Germ. Pfad; Preterite s&t, sat, Germ, 
sass; wses, was, Germ. war. In originally open 
syllables, however, OE. has a, when a, o, u 
stand in the syllable following: Plur. ctagas, 
daga,dagum, from dxg; faran (to go), Germ, 
fahren, but x when an e follows: dxges, dxge; 
fxder, father, Germ. Vater. So in many cases 
it happens that forms of the same word have 
different stem vowels; under such conditions 
the natural thing is for Analogy (Systemzwang), 
to strive to make itself prevail. Variant or dou- 
ble forms are therefore not rare. 

Before nasals, the tone-quality of WGerm. a 
underwent another change in OE.; here they 
must have pronounced a very open a-sound in- 
clining to an o. MSS. and the various dialects 
have various ways of denoting this sound. The 
very oldest texts write a: man, land, nama 
(Germ. Name) ; but after a short time o becomes 



1) We take as our basis, as do philological works in gen- 
eral, a hypothetical West Germanic sound-stage, found by 
comparison of the oldest known forms of the different 
WGerm. languages. 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 43 

very common : mon, lond, noma. The later An- 
glian texts have o regularly; in the later WS., 
however, a becomes usual and displaces o. 

§24. WGerm. e, i and o, u usually remain 
unchanged, except where the presence of some 
other sound exerts an influence upon them, e. g., 
helpan, help, Germ, helfen; bindan, bind, Germ, 
binden; god, God, Germ. Gott; snnu, son, Germ. 
Sohn. It should be noticed that o before a nasal 
in OE. becomes uicuman, come, Germ, kom- 
men; besides, WGerm. o becomes u in several 
words, e. g., full, Germ, voll; wnlf, Germ. Wolf; 
fugol, bird, Germ. Vogel. 

§25. WGerm. a is in WS. se:r sedan, read. 
Germ, raten; slsepan, sleep, Germ, schlafen; 
sefen, eve, Germ. Abend. This WS. se corre- 
sponds to e in the other dialects : redan, slepan, 
Before a nasal, WGerm. a becomes in OE., as 
in Fris., oimona, moon, Goth, mena, OHG. 
mano; Pret. Plur. nomon, they took, Germ, 
nahmen; cwomon, they came, Germ, kamen; 
gedon, done, Germ, getan. WGerm. e, I, 6, u 
are unchanged in OE. : her, here, Germ, hier; 
tld, tide (time), Germ. Zeit; fot, foot, Germ. 
Fuss; hits, house, Germ. Haus. 

§26. The WGerm. diphthong ai becomes a 
monophthong a in OE., dp, oath, Germ. Eid; 
stdn, stone, Germ. Stein; hat, hot, Germ, heiss; 
hdtan, to call, Germ, heissen. The diphthong an 
occurs in OE. in the form eaiheafod, head, 
Germ. Haupt; eage, eye, Germ. Auge; heawan, 
to hew, Germ, hauen; geleafa, (be) lief, Germ. 
Glaube. The development of this sound has 
been variously explained by different scholars. 
The diphthong en, which in Germ, becomes io, 
ie(i) 9 occurs in OE. in the form eoideop, deep, 
Germ, tief; deor, deer, Germ. Tier; beodan, of- 
fer, Germ, bieten. WGerm. iu, which becomes 



44 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

iu>(ii)>eii in German, in OE. becomes first of 
all io: stloran, steer, Germ, stuern; yet in the 
southern dialects lo and eo become identical in 
form, and in later WS. eo is regularly written 
for WGerm. ill, so far as umlaut has not altered 
the sound. 

§27. We shall now say a few words about 
certain changes to which several of the OE. vow- 
els are exposed and which are caused by neigh- 
boring sounds. The most important changes be- 
longing here are those which go under the name 
of Breaking and Umlaut; noteworthy also is the 
effect which palatal sounds and w exert on 
stressed vowels. Of these processes, Breaking 
is certainly the oldest. This is seen, among 
other things, from the fact that the diphthongs 
resulting from Breaking are regularly subjected 
to f-umlaut. 

§28. By breaking we mean the diphthonga- 
tion which certain vowels, notably a and e, un- 
derwent before certain consonant groups, espe- 
cially / and r followed by a consonant. In WS. 
a>ea, e>eo; e. g., eald, old, Germ, alt; 
healdan, hold, Germ, halten; healf, half, Germ, 
halb; feallan, fall, Germ, fallen; earm, poor, 
Germ, arm; wearm, warm, Germ, warm, etc., 
heorte, heart, Germ. Herz; weorlpan, to become, 
Germ, werden. Breaking of e before /-groups is 
rare. This is true of WS. The Anglian dialects 
do not exhibit breaking of a before /, and often 
also not before r. 

§29. /-umlaut is the influence of an original 
i or j following the stem syllable, which in his- 
toric times in OE. for the most part has either 
disappeared or has weakened to e and whose 
earlier existence therefore can frequently be 
proved only by comparison with related lan- 
guages. This umlaut is very richly developed 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 45 

in OE.; as examples may be cited the fol- 
lowing: settan, Goth, satjan; sendan, Goth, sand- 
jan; hselan, to heal, to hdl, whole; hyngran, to 
hungor; cypan, to make known, to cu)?, known; 
eald, old has the comparative ieldra, later ildra 
or yldra; to geleafa, belief, corresponds the verb 
geliefan, to believe, later gellfan, gelyfan. In 
the dialects the umlaut has at times variant 
forms; it should be mentioned that the Anglian 
dialects show oe as the umlaut of 6:ddm- 
doema(n); boc-boec, while WS. very early de- 
veloped this sound to e: deman, bee, and that 
the correspondence of WS. ie (later i or y) in the 
other dialects is e: WS. hieran, hiran, hyran= 
dial, heron, as also dial, gelefan. 

§30. Space forbids us to discuss the other 
changes of stressed vowels under influence of 
neighboring sounds. Here belongs, for instance, 
the socalled u- and o-umlaut, which in its re- 
sults strongly reminds one of Breaking; weoruld, 
world, with eo< Germanic e on account of the 
following u. This umlaut is most frequent in 
the Anglian dialects. Preceding palatals also 
modify the stemvowel: Germ, gab, Swed. gaf 
is in OE. geaf, gave; Germ, geben, to give, cor- 
responds to giefan. The labializing effect of aw 
is very powerful in Northumbrian : WS., weg= 
North, woeg; wel=woel; wiepan, w r eapon= 
woepen, etc. The influence of a preceding w 
upon a diphthong is widespread in the different 
dialects; thus, for sweord (swerd), Germ. 
Schwert, we have forms as sword or swurd; for 
weorpan (German werfen) w r e have worpan, 
wurpan; for weoruld, woruld, etc. 

§31. Amongst the quantitative changes of 
stressed vowels in OE., the most important is 
the lengthening of a short vowel before a con- 
sonant group consisting of / or r or a nasal with 
a following sonant stop: cild, gold, word, 



46 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

hand or hond, climban, blndan, bundon, etc. 
However, it is hard to say just how far this 
lengthening process goes; often it seems as if an 
uncertainty with regard to the long and the 
short had existed. It should be mentioned that 
many ModE. words are developed from the 
lengthened forms in OE., as child, climb, bind, 
bound; many others are from the short forms, 
as hand. 

§32. Vowels in unstressed syllables 
are subject to laws of development, the details of 
which are often very complicated, by the fact of 
analogy having played such a very important 
role here. This is particularly the case with the 
second element of a compound word. If the 
original meaning of the compound is quite clear 
to the speaker, as a rule, the form will be pre- 
served; if the meaning becomes obscure, it sinks 
from an originally independent word to a mere 
suffix, the form of which is often very much 
shortened. Examples of this phenomenon, com- 
mon to all languages, are e. g., the pronouns 
hwilc, which, and swelc, such, compared with 
Goth, hvileiks and swaleiks. In this brief ac- 
count we cannot enter into a discussion of the 
details of the treatment of vowels in unstressed 
syllables. 

2. OE. CONSONANTS. 

§33. The OE. consonant system does not show 
such a number of changes from the Prim. 
Germanic stage, as does the vowel system. Here 
English stands in sharp contrast to OHG., whose 
perhaps most peculiar characteristic is the great 
and far reaching change of a whole series of 
consonants, which we call the Second Sound 
Shift. Consequently some brief remarks will 
suffice here. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 47 

§34. The bilabial semivowel w occurs in OE. 
not only before a vowel and at the end of a syl- 
lable, but also enters as first or second element 
in several consonant groups, e. g., wrltan, write; 
wlite, beauty; cwepaii, say; hwd, who, etc. The 
Germanic semi-vowel jf occurs in OE. as a ModE. 
z/-sound and is designated by a g (rarely by i). 
Ex. gear, year, Germ. Jahr; geong, young, Germ. 
Jung. 

§35. r was pronounced rolled-cerebral, that 
is, with the tip of the tongue bent backward; 
thus we explain the Breaking before r men- 
tioned in §28. An r not seldom undergoes meta- 
thesis in OE., for instance, OE. beornan, Goth, 
brinnan, Swed. brinna; first, Germ. Frist; hors, 
Germ. Ross, from hros. Breakings before / seem 
to denote that this letter in certain cases stands 
for a dark guttural sound. 

§36. With nasals, we have to do with an im- 
portant Sound-law; m and n drop out in Pre- 
English times before the voiceless spirants J, 
j? and s; the preceding vowel becomes length- 
ened and at first probably nasalized; later this 
nasal quality disappears and the former pres- 
ence of a consonant is shown only by the length- 
ening of the vowel. An original a becomes in 
this case regularly d. Ex. (cf. §23) : gos, goose, 
Germ. Gans; top, tooth, Germ. Zahn; oper, other. 
Germ, ander; softe, soft, Germ, sanft; fif, five, 
Goth, fimf; us, Germ, uns; mup 9 mouth, Germ. 
Mund; wyscan, to wish, Germ, wunschen. 

An m-final in an inflectional ending becomes 
in later OE. -mdagon (D. Plur.) <older dagum. 

Inflectional n-final in Northumbrian is 
dropped in many cases, especially in the infini- 
tive: binda, setta, soeca — which reminds one 
strongly of the infinitive in the Scandinavian 
languages. This n is even dropped in the forms 
of the different cases of the weak declension, 
which consequently became identical very early. 



48 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

§37. Gutturals and Palatals. The 
Prim. Germ, /c-sound has been preserved in 
many cases in OE., and is denoted by c: e. g., 
corn, corn; crxft, craft; brecan, break; weorc, 
work; cwen, queen. However, even in Prim. 
English the /c-sound had become palatalized in 
certain cases, i. e., first of all a "front" ic-sound, 
as in Germ. Kind, which later, according to the 
view of many scholars, even in OE. times (ex- 
cept Northumbrian) developed to a sound like 
ModE. c/i-sound. This occurred to an initial 
c before a primary (i e., not caused by /-um- 
laut) palatal vowel i, e, se, etc.: cinn, chin, 
Germ. Kinn; cidan, chide; ceaf, chaff; ceosan, 
choose. But this law does not affect the new 
vowels which have become palatal through 
/-umlaut, before which the /c-sound is preserved : 
cene, keen, Germ.kuhn, cseg, key; cyning, king, 
Likewise, palatalization occurs medially before 
an original i or j (which has been dropped in 
historical times or has become e; ex. tiecaii 
(*taikjan), teach; w&ccan, watch; cirice, 
church; slice, stitch; bene, bench. Sometimes 
in OE. palatalization is denoted by the inser- 
tion of an e it&cean, etc. 

In Prim. Germanic, g was probably a spirant 
and remained such for a long time in OE., yet 
during the OE. period it became probably a 
stop when initial, e. g. gast, ghost, god, God. How- 
ever, it preserved its character as spirant when 
medial (cf. the German pronunciation of g in 
sagen), as Plur. dagas, inf. dragan, draw. Like 
c, g became palatalized very early in various po- 
sitions and then as a rule became a ModE. y- 
sound, thus being levelled with the Germanic 
j-sound, cf.§34, which was also denoted by g. 
Thus, before primary palatal vowels, e. g., OE. 
gieldan, yield, Germ, gelten; geard, yard; but not 
before umlaut-vowels: ges, geese; gyrdan, gird. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 49 

Further, when medial and final after palatals: 
dxg, day; weg, way; ssegde, said; slsegen, slain. 
Double gg and ng before an original i or j be- 
came palatalized, and probably (except in 
Northumbrian) developed to a dzh, ndzh, (i. e., 
as in hedge, hinge), even in OE. times, (eg was 
the usual OE. way of denoting this sound); 
hrycg, ridge; brycg, bridge; sengan, singe (OE. 
sometimes sengean, etc.). 

Original sk, written in OE. se, seems, even in 
OE., to have become an s/i-sound; seip, ship; 
scearp, sharp; fisc, fish. 

Initial-/i was certainly in OE. no longer a gut- 
tural spirant, but merely a rough breathing. The 
same seems to have been the case with h in the 
combinations hi, hn, hr, hw.hlaf, loaf; hnutu, 
nut; hring, ring; hwit, white; (h in the group 
hw was, however, a spirant in Northumbrian), 
As proof of this may be mentioned that h occurs 
very often in MSS. at the beginning of a word 
where it has no etymological justification. When 
medial and final, h had the same value in OE. 
as the German ch — (ach- or ich-sound) \\ohte, 
thought; rich, rough; niht, night. 

x was at first usually pronounced hs in OE., 
for example, feax, hair, Goth, fahs; weaxan, 
grow, Goth, wahsjan; it seems to have received 
the value ks very early. In several words x 
seems always to have been pronounced ks, as in 
rixian, to reign. 

§38. The spirants f, s, \ are for the most 
part surds (J> as th in think). They are sonant 
when medial between sonants; f is in such cases 
the sign for the sound u : delfan, to delve ; lufu f 
love. 

§39. OE. double consonants are partly of 
Prim. Germanic, partly of WGerm., partly of 
Prim. English origin. At the end of a word a 



50 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

double consonant is usually simplified in writ- 
ing. Certain MSS. are absolutely inconsistent 
in denoting double consonants. 

The change 1 between different consonants in 
the different forms and derivatives of a word or 
word-stem which is due to the so-called Verner's 
Law, makes its appearance in OE., although 
here, as in other languages, analogy often intro- 
duces the one sound into forms where it could 
not regularly occur. Examples of this conso- 
nant change are most fitly given in the discussion 
of the structure of the strong verb. 

3. OLD ENGLISH DECLENSION. 

§40. In discussing the OE. substantive inflec- 
tion it is customary to follow the division accord- 
ing to stems, which is usual especially in gram- 
mars of older Germanic languages. So we speak 
of vowel-stems, to which we reckon o-stems and 
the feminine a-stems, the i- and u-steiiis; and 
of Consonant stems, which in the Primitive Indo- 
European language, as in Greek and Latin, in- 
cluded a great number of different types; of 
these, however, only one, the socalled Weak 
declension, i. e. the n-stem, has found a rich 
development in Germanic, while others live only 
in isolated examples, or have been entirely lost. 
OE. has three genders; yet it must be noticed thai 
even in OE. times the differentiation of gender 
has begun to grow very indistinct in northern 
Northumbrian (Lindsfarne Gospels and Dur- 
ham Book) . The same dialect shows the begin- 
nings of a levelling of the different case forms in 
the declensions, caused by the far reaching 
force of analogy. 2 There are two numbers, 
Singular and Plural; the cases are Nominative, 



1) Galled "grammatical change." 

2) See the author's article "Beitraege zur Kenntnis des 
Altnorthumbrischen" in the "Memoires de la §ociete Neo- 
J?hiiologique a Helsingfors," I., p. 219f. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 51 

Genitive, Dative and Accusative, Sing, and Plur., 
with the addition of an Instrumental in the Sing., 
which usually is identical with the Dative in 
form. 

§41. o-stems. The numerous masculine o- 
stems have the following inflection in OE. : Sing. 
N. A. wulf, G. wulfes, D. I. wulfe; Plur. N. A. 
wulfas, G. wulf a, D. wulf urn. In the same way 
are inflected, for example, dom, hring, earm, 
mu]>. The inflection of the neuter is the same as 
that of the masculine excepting in the N. A. 
Plur., which in a short syllabled word ends in 
-« (later often in -o, -a) and in a word with a 
long stem syllable has no ending: dor, door, 
N. A. Plur. doru, likewise spor, spur; hof, yard, 
etc. — word N. A. Plur. word, likewise ban, bone; 
deor, animal; wif, woman; beam, child, etc. 
Neuters of two syllables or more follow laws 
which we cannot discuss here. 1 Concerning 
the alteration of se and a in certain words, see 
§23. 

§42. The socalled jo- and u;o-stems, i. e. 
stems whose original end-vowel is preceded by 
a j or a w, show certain peculiarities. Accord- 
ing to certain rules which, especially in later 
OE., are crossed by the power of analogy, this 
sound appears in several cases. In this way is 
explained an inflection such as here, army, Masc, 
G. her(i)ges, D. her(i)ge; Plur. her(i)ge(e)as 2 9 
besides which also occur heres, here, in complete 
conformity with the chief type of the o-stems. 
So also meolu, meal, G. meolwes, D. meolwe. 

§43. The masc. and neuter of the o-declen- 
sion are supplemented by the feminines of the 



1) See Sievers-Cook "Grammar of Old English," section 
243. Also, Wright, "Old English Grammar," section 347f. 

2) ,4 -ig-" and "ige" are nothing more than a representa- 
tion of the "3"- sound. 



52 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

d-declension, as the Latin masc. in -us and neu- 
ters in -urn correspond to the feminines in a. 
The OE. d-stems are inflected as follows: Sing. 
N. giefu, gift, G. D. A. I. giefe, Plur. N. A. 
giefa(-e), G. giefa or giefena, D. giefum. In 
this way for example, are inflected cearu, care; 
lufu, love. Words with long stem syllables differ 
from the paradigm above, in that the N. Sing, 
is without ending: Idr, lore, stund, time, glof, 
glove, etc.; thus also are inflected sdwol, soul; 
leornung, learning, and others in -ung. 

Among the feminines are to be found jd- and 
i#d-stems, which, however, show no great dif- 
ferences from the inflection of the pure d-stems. 

§44. The i-declension includes a great num- 
ber of masculines and feminines; neuters are 
very rare . 

The inflection of the i-masc. coincides with 
that of the masc. o- and jo- stems except in 
the N. A. Plur., which in the i-declension ends 
in -e: wine, friend, N. A. Plur. wine; Engle, 
N. Plur., Angles, Seaxe, Saxons; Norphymbre, 
Northumbrians. However, by analogy to the 
o-stems, -as has been introduced in the N. A. 
Plur. of most of the masc. of this class, especi- 
ally in the case of nearly all those having long 
stems. So words such as wyrm, Germ. Wurm; 
giest, guest, are inflected exactly like wulf; we 
recognize from the umlaut of the vowel of the 
stem that the word originally belonged to the 
/-declension. (Prim. Germanic *wurmiz, gastiz). 

Nearly all the feminines of the i-declen- 
sion have long stems, e. g., ben, prayer; cwen, 
queen; tid, time; hyd, hide, skin; deed, deed, 
Germ. Tat, etc. These words are inflected like 
the long d-stems except that in the Ace. Sing, 
they are without ending. In the northern dia- 
lects, however, and later even in WS. the Ace. 
ending -e forces its way into the i-declension. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 53 

In Northumbrian, besides, occur a great num- 
ber of other formations due to analogy; above 
all it should be noticed that in the northern 
dialect the G. Sing, often has the masc.-neuter 
ending -es. 

§45. The u.-declension, which is well pre- 
served in Gothic, shows in OE. a strong tendency 
to conform to the o-declension. This is especi- 
ally true of words with long stems. Most char- 
acteristic and recognizable as w-stems are the 
nominatives of words having short stems, as 
masc. stow, son; wiidii, wood; fern, duru, door. 
Beside the original G. Sing, suna, N. A. Plur. 
suna, we find later sunes and sunas in conformity 
with the o-declension. 

§46. The weak declension (or n- 
stems) has the following scheme of inflection 
in WS. : Masc. N. Sing, wiga, warrior; G. D. A. I. 
wigan; Plur. N. A. wigan, G. wigena, D. wigum. 
Fem. is distinguished from the masc. only in 
the N. Sing.: tunge, tongue; neuters, in the N. A. 
Sing, eage, eye. Northumbrian (see §36.) has 
dropped the inflectional -n, whereby very early 
the forms were confused; often even strong 
forms are to be found, as a G. Sing, in -es, some- 
times even a N. Plur. in -as. 

§47. The remains of other consonant stems 
we cannot discuss further here. They show 
various peculiarities in their inflection, but have 
been strongly influenced by analogy to the o- 
stems. Here belong the so-called nouns of 
relationship, feeder, moder, broper, dohtor, 
sweostor. Among the isolated words belonging 
to consonant declensions may be mentioned 
mann or monn, Plur. menn; fot, Plur. fet; top, 
Plur. te]>. 



54 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

§48. ADJECTIVES have two sorts of inflec- 
tion in Germanic, strong and weak. The weak in- 
flection is the same as that of the weak noun 
except in the G. Plur. where the strong form has 
as a rule replaced the weak. In all Germanic 
languages the strong adjective constructs sev- 
eral forms according to the pronominal inflec- 
tion. If we except some minor fluctuations 
due to peculiarities of the stem, the OE. strong 
adjective is inflected according to the following 
scneme : Sing. N. m. f . n. god, (short stem m. 
glsed, f. gladu, n. glsed) ; G. m. n. godes, f. godre; 
D. m. n. godum, f. godre; A. m. godne, f. gode, 
n. god; I. m. n. (f. has none) gode; Plur. N. A. m. 
gode, f. goda or gode; n. god (but gladu) ; G. m. 
f . n. godra; D. m. f. n. godum. 

§49. COMPARISON. OE. has only one com- 
parative suffix, -ra, which corresponds to Goth. 
~iza and -oza, OHG. -ir and -or. The compara- 
tive has usually no umlaut heard-heardra; glsed- 
glsedra; earm-earmra, etc.; however, several 
words have umlaut; eald-ieldra, old; sceort- 
scyrtra, short. Comparatives are always inflect- 
ed like weak adjectives. 

The uninflected form of the superlative ends 
in -ost, comparatively seldom in -est; heardost, 
etc. ; umlaut, as in the comparative, ieldest. The 
uninflected form may be used as N. Sing, (and 
as A. Sing, neuter). Otherwise strong forms 
are rare, and the weak inflection is used almost 
exclusively. In inflected forms the suffix has 
usually the vowel e : heardesta. 

§50. PRONOUNS. Omitting mention of the 
numerals, we shall speak of the most usual OE. 
pronouns and their forms. 

Personal Pronouns. 1st person; ic, G. 
mln, D. me, A. me (mec) ; Plur. we, G. user, 
or ure, D. us, A. us (usic). 2nd Person. )>ii-)>in- 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 6fc 

\e-\e (pec) 9 Plur. ge-eower-eow-eow (powic); 
dual forms also occur for both pronouns: 1st 
Pers. wit-uncer-unc-unc ; 2nd Pers. git-incer-inc- 
inc. 3rd Person: N. Sing. m. he, f. heo (hio,) 
n. hit; G. his-hire-his ; D. him-hire-him; A. hine- 
hie-hit. Plur. m. f. n. N. A. hie (hi) 9 G. hira 
(hiera, heora), D. him. 

The Possessive Pronouns are mln, pin, sin 
(for the most part in poetry; elsewhere the 
Genitive of the personal pronoun is used) ; 
Plur. ure (user), eower. 

The Demonstrative Pronoun. The sim- 
ple demonstrative pronoun, which usually in 
OE. represents the definite article as well, is 
inflected as follows: Sing. N. se-seo-pset; G. 
p&s-pa>re-paes ; D. psem (pdm)-piere-p2em (pdm) ; 
A. pone-pd-pzet; I. py, pon; Plur. for all gen- 
ders pd-pdra (pa>ra)-pa>m (pdm). In North- 
umbrian the forms in N. Sing. m. and f. pe 
and pin (pio) are very common; also in later 
WS. the forms pe and peo occur. 

To the German "dieser" (this) corresponds 
the pronoun pes-peos-pis; Plur. pds. 

Interrogative Pronouns ; "who" : hwd- 
hwset, G. hwses, D. hwa>m (hwdm), A. hwone- 
hwset, I. hwy (hwi) ; "which": hwelc (hwilc, 
hwylc) ; "which of two" : hwseper. These are 
declined like strong adjectives. 

Among the indefinite pronouns may be 
mentioned sum, some; dele, each; senig, any; 
swele (swile, swyle), such, etc. 

4. OLD ENGLISH CONJUGATION. 

§51. The OE. verb has one voice, the act- 
ive. Of the old Medio-passive only one form- 
remains, hdtte, Goth, haitada, "I am called." The 
Passive is formed by means of the auxiliary verb 
beon, wesan, to be, seldom by weorpan, to be- 



56 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

come, and the Past. Part. There are two 
tenses, present and preterite. The 
Present is also used to take the place of a Future, 
which is rarely expressed by using the auxiliary 
verb sculan. There are two complete moods: 
Indicative and optative or subjunc- 
tive, sometimes also called conjunctive; 
an imperative belongs to the Present. There 
are two numbers. The infinite forms of a 
verb consist of an infinitive, a present 
participle with Active force and a past 
participle with Passive or Intransitive 
force. 

According to the way in which they form their 
Preterite, the Germanic verbs are usually di- 
vided into two chief classes : Strong and 
weak verbs, which will be discussed later. 

§52. As models for the OE. Conjugation we 
choose the verb helpan, to help. The forms are : 

Pres. Ind. Sing. 1. helpe, 2. hilp(e)st, 3. 
hilp{e)]>; Plur. 1. 2. 3. helpcty; Opt. Sing, helpe; 
Plur. helpen; Imper. Sing. 2. help; Plur. 1. helpan 
(rare), 2. helpap. Pret. Ind. 1. healp, 2. hulpe, 
3. healp; Plur. hulpon; Opt. Sing, hulpe; Plur. 
hulpen; Inf. helpan; Pres. Part, helpende; Past 
Part, holpen. 

Note. In the very oldest texts and in the 
Anglian dialect the 1. Sing. Ind. Pres. has usu- 
ally the ending -u or -o. 2. Sing. Pres. Ind. 
has the ending -is in the oldest texts, more 
commonly -es. The 3. Sing. Pres. has -ty in 
some of the oldest texts. In Northumbrian the 
3. Sing. Pres. often has the ending -es. In 2. 
and 3. Sing. Ind. Pres. occur in WS. and 
Kentish, but not in Anglian, many syncopations 
of the vowel of the ending and the consonants 
thus left in juxtaposition are frequently assimi- 
lated: binde-bintst-bint etc. Where the pro- 
nouns we and ge follow immediately after a 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 57 

verb, it often has, in all tenses and moods, the 
ending -e: binde, bunde, we, ge. In the Plur. 
Ind. Pres. Northumbrian often has the ending 
-as. The infinitive -n is lacking in Northum- 
brian. After the particle to the infinitive has 
an inflected form: to bindanne (-enne), in very 
late texts sometimes to bindende. The Past Part, 
of simple verbs often has the prefix ge- (older 
form gi-). 

§53. The tense-formation of the 
strong verbs is chiefly that of the Prim. Germanic 
verbs, which we know from Goth, and OHG., 
modified by the phonetic laws already dis- 
cussed. We distinguish between verbs with 
ablaut and reduplicating verbs. 

Examples of the different classes follow. 

1. gripan-grdp-gripon-gripen, to grasp. 

Note. We give the Principle Parts custom- 
arily used: the Infinitive, Pret. Sing, and Plur., 
the Past Part, without prefix. 

In like manner are inflected drifan, to drive; 
glidan, to glide; scinan, to shine; writan, to 
write. So-called grammatical change (see §39) 
is found e. g. in sntyan-snap-snidon-sniden, to 
cut. 

2. beodan-bead-budon-boden, to offer, bid; 
cleofan, to cleave asunder; sceotan, to shoot; 
fleogan, to fly; with gram, change: ceosan-ceas- 
curon-coren, to choose. 

3. Several types depending upon the conso- 
nant combinations which follow the stem-vowel : 

a) bindan - band - bundon - bunden, to bind; 
findan, to find; spinnan, to spin ;singan, to sing; 
drincan, to drink; swimman, to swim, etc. 

b) helpan- healp (Angl. halp)-hulpon 9 holpen, to 
help; delfan, to delve; sweltan, to die. 



58 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

c) weorpan-wearp-wurpon-worpen, to cast; 
ceorfan, to carve; feohtan, to fight; with gram, 
change; weorpan-wearp-wurdon-worden, to be- 
come. 

4. beran-bser-bseron-boren, to bear; stelan, 
to steal; teran, to tear; brecan, to break; niman- 
nom-ndmon-numen, to take; cuman-c(w)6m- 
c(w)6mon-cumen or cymen, to come. 

5. sprecan-spraec-spr&con-sprecen, to speak; 
tredan, to tread; metan, to measure; with gram, 
change : cwe)>an-cw8e]>-cwa>don-cweden. As in 
the allied languages, the following verbs of this 
class have weak presents : biddan, licgan, sittan. 

6. faran-for-foron-faren, to go; grafan, to 
dig; dragon, to draw, etc.; hebban, to raise, 
Germ, heben; swerian (swerigean) to swear, and 
a few others have weak presents. 

Reduplicating verbs. 

Reduplication in the preterite, which is well 
preserved in Gothic, is still met with in 
certain forms in the Anglian dialects. In 
WS., however, as in OHG., a fusion of the re- 
duplicating- and the stem-syllable takes places, 
whereby these verbs have the appearance of 
ordinary ablaut verbs. 1 Ex. hdtan, Germ, 
heissen, to call, Pret. Angl. heht, WS. het, Past 
Part, hdten; rseden, Germ, raten, to advise, 
Pret. Angl. reord; WS. healdan-heold-healden, 
to hold; feallan-feoll-feallen, to fall; growan- 
greow-growen, to grow, etc. The Preterite has 
the same vowel in Sing, and Plur. 

Note. In the strong verbs, /-umlaut is usual 
in the 2 and 3 Sing.: beran-birest (birst) -bire)> 
(bir]>) 9 f alien- fielst-fiel)> 9 etc. This umlaut is 
very common in WS., rarer in Kentish and 



1) Other explanations have been offered. See Streitberg, 
"Urgermanische Grammatik," section 216. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 59 

Mercian and practically unknown in Northum- 
brian; on the other hand, the Anglian dialects 
frequently have u- and o-umlaut; inf. beora(n), 
nioma(n) 9 etc. 

§54. Weak Verbs. 

It is usual to divide OE. weak verbs, as in 
OHG., into three classes. The third class, 
through analogy and other causes, has become 
difficult to recognize. The first two classes are. 
however, very clearly distinguishable. 

All the weak verbs have a dental preterite, 
i. e., they form the preterite by means of a 
suffix -de (-te) and the Past Part, by means of 
a -d (-?). The intricate rules for the syncopa- 
tion of the suffix vowels and the consequent 
assimilations, must be omitted here, and only 
paradigms of the first and second classes of 
weak verbs given. 

Class I. Pres. Ind. nerie, I save, nerest, nerep, 
Plur. neriap. Opt. nerie, nerien. Pret. Ind. 
nerede, -des (f), -de; Plur. neredon; Opt. nerede- 
nereden; Imper. nere; neriap; Inf. nerian; Pres. 
Part, neriende; Past Part, (ge)nered. Long 
stem: deman, to judge, demest(demst), demelp 
(demp) 9 etc. Pret. demde, etc. P. Part, (ge) de- 
nied. Further examples of verbs belonging to 
Class I : hieran, to hear, hierde-gehiered; fyllan, 
to fill, fylde-(ge)fylled, etc.; with early syncopa- 
tion of suffix vowels; sellan-sealde-(ge) seald, to 
give; tellan-tealde-(ge)teald, to count; tsecan 
(t8ecean)-tsehte-{ge)tseht, to teach; secan(se- 
cean)-s6hte-(ge)sdht, to seek; wyrcan(wyrce- 
an)worhte-(ge)worht, to work; bringan-hrohte- 
(ge)broht, to bring, etc. 

Class II. Pres. Ind. lufie, I love, lufast-lufap; 
lufiap; Opt. lufie, lufien; Pret. lufode(-ade) ; 
Plur. lufodon (-edon) ( etc. Imper. lufa, lufalp; 
Inf. lufian; Pres. Part, lufiende; Past Part. 



60 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

(ge)lufod (-ad). Suffix vowels vary greatly in 
the dialects. In the same way are inflected: 
locian, to look; wunian, to dwell; sceawian, to 
look; bledsian, to bless, and others. 

§55. Of the so-called Preterite-Presents, we 
shall name: 1. wdt, I know, 2. wast, 3. wdt; 
Plur. witon; Pret. wisse or wiste. ah, I own, 2. 
dhst, 3. ah; Plur. agon; Pret. dhte. 1. 3. can(n) 
or con(n), I can, 2. canst; Plur. cunnon; Pret. 
cu]?e. 1. 3 scea/, I shall. 2. scealt; Plur. sculon; 
Pret. scolde(sceolde). 1. 3. m^^, I can, 2. meaht 
or miht; Plur. magon; Pret. meahte or mihte. 1. 
3. mof, I may, 2. most; Plur. moton; Pret. moste. 

§56. The verb fo &e has widely varying forms 
in WS. and in the dialects formed from several 
different stems. Pret. and Inf. are formed from 
the root n;es: Pret. u;a?s, Inf. wesan. Besides, 
an Inf. beon is found, from a root from which 
many Present forms are constructed: 1. beo(m), 
2, bist, 3. bilp; Plur. beolp. Of another origin 
are the WS. forms eom-eart-is; Plur. sind(on) 
and the Northumbrian forms am-arp-is; Plur. 
aron. 



Ill 

The Influence of Foreign Languages 
Upon English 



§57. In this chapter we shall show the most 
important influences from foreign languages to 
which the English language has been subjected 
during its development. Hence we must notice 
phenomena from remote as well as from recent 
times. By this means the chronological sequence 
of our account of the history of the language 
will suffer somewhat, but on the other hand we 
shall be able to treat related matters as a unit, 
which would otherwise be disunited. The po- 
litical history of England explains the fact that 
the language of the land shows foreign elements 
in a higher degree and to a greater extent than 
most others. The great mass of foreign, es- 
pecially Latin and Romance, elements has given 
rise to an idea, especially prevalent some time 
ago, that English has altered its original char- 
acter to the degree that the study of English 
philology ought properly to be pursued in con- 
nection with Romance philology. We shall 
try later to show that such a view is groundless; 
here we shall only expressly insist that the inner 
character of the language has not been altered 
by the numerous foreign words, and that, al- 
though Romance philology is an important aid 



62 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

to the study of the English language, English 
philology is unequivocally a branch of Germanic 
philology. 

1. CELTIC INFLUENCE. 

§58. Since, before the arrival of the Ger- 
manic tribes, Britain was inhabited by Celts, one 
would expect to find numerous traces of Celtic 
influence in the English language. That this is 
not the case is, at least in some degree, the result 
of the unscrupulous character of the English 
conquest; it may also be explained by the com- 
pletely subordinate position to which the sub- 
jugated Britons sank under their Germanic 
masters. 1 A Celtic influence upon the structure 
of the English language cannot be proved, and 
even the number of borrowed words is very 
small. The Celtic etymologies suggested for 
English words seem to have been particularly 
the prey of misfortune, in that most often 
words that have been supposedly Celtic, upon 
further investigation prove to be of another 
origin. As examples of English borrowings from 
Celtic may be mentioned from older times, OE. 
dry, sorcerer, from the Irish drui, and bannoc, 
bannock; it is highly improbable that the words 
so often cited as Celtic loans : curse, cradle and 
hog are Celtic at all. Later borrowings are bog, 
brogue (originally a kind of shoe), clan, sham 
rock, etc. 

2. NORSE INFLUENCE. 

§59. In the first chapter, we have brieflly de- 
picted the progress of the Scandinavian viking- 
raids in England. These raids ended in the com- 
plete conquest of the land by the Scandinavians. 



1) See Jespersen, "Growth and Structure of the English 
Language," p. 38f. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 63 

A host of Scandinavians settled in England, es- 
pecially in the northern and eastern parts of the 
land, and during the time of the Danish over- 
lordship, the Norse influence was, naturally, 
very powerful everywhere. 

The English at first considered these North- 
erners as strangers, and a deep chasm separated 
the two elements of population. But after a 
time, when they began to grow accustomed to 
their neighbors, and when the heathen pirates 
became peaceful farmers, and gradually became 
Christian, the contact between Englishman and 
Dane became more intimate. They could not 
help noticing the near relationship of the two 
nationalities. Their languages were very simi- 
lar, so that an Englishman could easily under- 
stand many of the utterances of a Scandina- 
vian. From many places in the Norse literature 
it is evident that the Scandinavians considered 
the Englishmen bloodbrothers. Scandinavian 
England became of great significance in the life 
of the whole Scandinavian people; we have 
several Norse Runic inscriptions from England, 
and some songs of the Edda seem to have 
originated there. English loan-words in no 
small number were adopted, first of all by the 
Scandinavians in England, and then they were 
carried to the Scandinavian North. Such words 
are, 1 for instance bdtr, boat, OE. bat; the 
original ONorse form is beit; tdkn, token, OE. 
tdcn, original ONorse form teikn; further, sev- 
eral ecclesiastical terms, such as prestr, klerkr, 
gvOpspjall (cf. OE. godspell, gospel), etc. The 
English influence upon Scandinavian needs a 
more thorough investigation. 



1) See Kluge, "Geschichte der engliachen Sprache," in 
Paul's Grundriss, 2nd Ed., I., p. 932. 



64 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

§60. We are better informed about the Scan- 
dinavian words in English. 1 A long time seems 
to have passed before such words began to come 
in, as far as we can determine by an investiga- 
tion of the vocabulary of English texts. The 
great Northumbrian Bible translations of the 
10th century are almost untouched by Norse 
influence. But before 1150 a great number of 
Norse words have come into English; as ex- 
amples may be mentioned the following words, 
of which the most are taken from laws or from 
the later portions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle : 
callian, ONorse kalla; cnif, ONorse knifr; 
dreng, ON. drengr; hittan, ON. hitta; lagu, 
law, ON. lgg<lagu; tacan, take, ON. taka. 
The number of similar loan-words is very 
great; many of them have not been long- 
lived in England; others, as call, knife, law 
and take belong to the everyday vocabulary of 
ModE. In many cases, because of the great sim- 
ilarity of the languages, it is imposible to decide 
whether a word is of English or of Scandinavian 
origin. A more careful study of the living Eng- 
lish dialects will probably shed light on many 
a dark and difficult problem. 

§61. How long Scandinavian dialects were 
spoken in England cannot be definitely decided. 
In the 11th and 12th centuries we meet Norse 
Runic inscriptions in England; on the other 
hand, we have inscriptions from the 12th century 
written in English by Scandinavians. For the 
rest, as far as the time when a word was adopted 
into the English is concerned, we must follow the 
criterion offered us by the history of sounds. In 
any case, the entrance of Scandinavian elements 
into English must have been closed before 1250, 



1) This has been made the subject of thorough study by 
Bjoerkman, "Scandinavian Loan-words in Middle English." 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 65 

at least in North England, where the direct pro- 
cesses of borrowing were carried on. Many 
words perhaps penetrated very much later into 
South England. Concerning the chronological 
details and the phonetic characteristics 1 of the 
words of Scandinavian origin, we cannot speak 
here. , 

§62. Of extraordinary importance as proof of 
the strength of the Norse influence is the fact — 
not so usual in the history of language — that not 
only so-called "Stuff -words," i. e., nouns, adjec- 
tives and verbs, are taken over from the Scandi- 
navian, but among the loans are several "Form- 
words" especially pronouns. Even in an OE. in- 
scription from Yorkshire we find a pronominal 
form hanum instead of OE. him. This form 
has not prevailed in English as has been the 
case with the Scandinavian pronouns for the 3rd 
pers. plur., which lives in the ModE. they, them 
and their. Some scholars, however, will not see 
in these forms a direct loan from ONorse, but a 
modification under Norse influence of the OE. 
demonstrative plural \a-\a>m-\ara. x In ME. at 
is found with the meaning "to" before an in- 
finitive and sum in the meaning "as," both 
Norse. ModE. fro is of Scandinavian origin 
(Norse fra) ; likewise the ModE. use of till seems 
to find its explanation in its Scandinavian orig- 
in. ME. basken, ModE. bask comes from the 
Norse passive (medial) form batyask, to bathe 
oneself; ME. busk is from Norse buask, to make 
oneself ready. Much that was current in ME. 
has later disappeared from the language. Not 



1) Let us mention for example that in ME., the initial 
"sk" usually shows Scandinavian origin, since OE. was 
palatalized very early and became "sh-." Such words with 
"sk" are "skin," "sky," "skill," "scant," "scream," etc. " 

2) Sweet, "New English Grammar," section 1070. 



66 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

only loan words, but even word formations and 
expressions formed on Norse models can be 
found in ME. 

§63. During OE. times, while the chief litera- 
ture existed in Southern England atone, the 
Norse influence felt in the writings is compara- 
tively slight. But to judge from certain 
ME. texts, the language spoken during the lltlr 
and 12th centuries in some parts of the land 
thickly populated by Scandinavians, must have 
exhibited a curious mixture of Norse and Eng- 
lish elements; the mixture of two languages 
so nearly related as OE. and ONorse can easily 
be imagined. It is even possible 1 that this 
contact between Norse and English helped to 
hasten the rapid decay of grammatical forms 
in these parts of England. The Scandinavian 
words seem to have lived for a time side by 
side with the native ones, until finally, in the 
struggle for existence, one of the words con- 
quered the other and supplanted it. Sometimes 
one dialect has preserved an OE. word, while 
another grants admission to a Scandinavian 
word. The OE. a>g, egg, lived for a long time in 
Southern England in the form eg; in the North, 
however, the Norse form egg was predominant 
and this form won entrance into Standard Eng- 
lish. In some cases it seems that a ModE. word 
offers a sort of compromise between the native 
and the corresponding Scandinavian word; in 
this way we can explain words like give and get, 
whose hard £ -sound is surely of Scandinavian 
origin. 

It is not easy in every case to determine from 
what district of Scandinavia the words, which 
were incorporated with English, came. So 



1) Cf. Jespersen, "Studier over engelske Kasus/' 1891, p. 
$7. 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 67 

much, though, is certain, that several Scandi- 
navian dialects left their impression, since his- 
tory tells us that more than one Scandinavian 
land sent vikings and colonists to Britain. 

3. FRENCH INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND. 1 

§64. The influence of Normandy began with 
the reign of Edward the Confessor. Notwith- 
standing the fact that he belonged to the old 
native royal family, he was absolutely unable 
to preserve the national spirit. His mother was 
a Norman princess; he himself spent his youth 
in France, and when he became king, he gath- 
ered Normans about him and gave them great 
estates and high offices. The brief national 
reaction under Godwin and Harold was of no 
significance, and when Duke William of Ncr* : 
mandy conquered England and took recession 
of the throne, in 1066, the French element be- 
came dominant in the land for several cen- 
turies. 2 William completely reorganized the 
property relations of the conquered land. Many 
estates were confiscated and part were appro- 
priated to the crown, part given in fief to 
Norman nobles; thus the great estates came 
into Norman hands. Among the vassals oP 
lower rank, however, many Englishmen were 
to be found. Since direct vassals, as well as the 
vassals of lower rank, had to swear an oath of 
allegiance to the King personally, the crown 
succeeded to a certain extent in limiting the 
power of the higher nobles. The importance 



1) Dietrich Behrens, "Franzoesische Elemente im En- 
glischen," in Paul's Grundriss I., p. 950f. 

2) The Normans were of Scandinavian origin, but before 
the time of William they had completely adopted the French 
language and customs and are as a consequence to be con- 
sidered as being purely French. Besides, it should be no- 
ticed that not only Normans, but Frenchmen from other 
parts of France settled in England, not only immediately 
after the Conquest, but later. 






68 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

of this fact is considerable ; the national element 
could hereby maintain itself much better in the 
struggle for existence, than had been the case if 
the great nobles had been lords with unlimtied 
power over their subjects. The old national 
order remained unaltered, but numerous 
changes in the personnel had taken place and 
the most important secular and spiritual offices, 
as the archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, 
were in the hands of the Normans. 

§65. It is, naturally, impossible to compute 
the number of Normans and French who came 
to England and settled there during the time 
of the Conqueror and his successors. We can 
feel sure that beside the soldiers and knights, 
thousands of merchants and tradesmen settled 
\ in v the towns. Great was also the number of 
French paries *s and monks. The French element 
spread everywhere, and the language received 
the reputation wftich naturally belongs to the 
language of the dominating class. Typical of 
conditions in England two hundred years after 
the Conquest are the following verses from 
Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, written in the 
latter half of the 13th century : 
pus com lo Engelond into Normandies hond. 
& pe Normans ne cou)?e speke )>o bote hor owe 

speche, 
& speke French as hii dude atom, & hor children 

dude also teche. 
So )?at heiemen of ]?is lond, ]?at of hor blod come, 
HoldeJ? alle )?ulke speche, )?at hii of horn nome. 
Vor bote a man conne Frenss, me telj? of him 

lute; 
Ac lowe men holde]? to Engliss & to her owe 

speche yute. 
Ich wene J?er ne be]? in al ]?e world contreyes 

none, 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 69 

pat ne holdej? to hor owe speche, bote Engelond 
one. 1 

§66. French became the language of the 
royal court and remained so for several cen- 
turies. About 1400 a count, in a letter to Henry 
IV., asked pardon for writing in English instead 
of French or Latin. Long after the differences 
in nationality were leveled in England, the court 
continued to use French, which since the days 
of Chivalry and the Crusades, was the favorite 
language of the elegant and refined circles of 
society. Yet the kings of England seem not to 
have been entirely indifferent to the language 
which was spoken by the majority of the people. 
It is told of William the Conqueror that he at- 
tempted, though with little success, to learn to 
understand English. About the knowledge of 
English of the following kings, we are not very 
well informed. During the reign of John and of 
Henry III, the native nobility and the citizens 
of the towns arose in arms for the constitutional 
privileges of the people. The Norman posses- 
sions were lost and a national consciousness 
awoke, which was profitable for the position 
and reputation of the language of the people. 
It was long, however, before the court conde- 
scended to speak English. Even Edward I 
(1272-1307) us<-,d French regularly as his official 
language, although he understood and could 
speak English. During the reign of his suc- 
cessors the language of the people gradually 



1) Lo! thus came England into Normandy's hand. And 
the Normans then could speak only their own speech, and 
spoke French as they did at home, and had their children 
taught it also. So that the nobles of this land, that come 
ot their blood, all keep the same speech that they had of 
them. For unless a man know French, he is held in small 
regard; but low men keep to English and to their own 
speech still. I think there are not in all the -world any 
countries that keep not to their own speech but England 
alone. 



70 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

won place in the court, and of Henry IV. (1399- 
1413) we are expressly told that his mother- 
tongue was English. 

§67. As the French language was spoken by 
the rulers of England, it was also the official lan- 
guage of the State and was used in the Admin- 
istration, in the Courts of Justice and in Parlia- 
ment. As to the courts of justice, English, na- 
turally, was used by parties of lower social 
rank. Since the judges were almost exclus- 
ively Normans, who did not understand 
English, the result was that very early an in- 
fluential class of interpreters and attorneys 
arose, and the legal terminology very soon ex- 
hibited a curious blending of English and 
French expressions. In the year 1362 it was 
decided by a decree of Parliament — written in 
French — that the oral proceedings in the courts 
should be carried on in English; this on the 
ground that French was understood by few in 
country districts. Yet the use of French is not 
expressly forbidden. In judicial decrees Latin 
is usually found, later also French. Here too, in 
the 15th century, English comes gradually to its 
own. 

§68. The above named year, 1362, is signifi- 
cant in the history of England because, for the 
first time, a session of Parliament was opened 
with an address in English. This has been in- 
terpreted as a proof of the growing power of the 
Lower House; yet it was a long time before 
French was driven out of Parliament. Up to 
the year 1488, legal documents were published 
exclusively in French or Latin, at times in both, 
parallel. Only after the year mentioned above 
does English become usual in these publica- 
tions. The decrees of Parliament, up to the 
close of the 14th century, are practically without 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 71 

exception written in French, and even after 
that time French and Latin are common. Eng- 
lish is seen in decrees for the first time under 
Henry VI. (1422-1471). Even in our day certain 
French formulae exist in the Parliamentary 
language of England. 

§69. Until the middle of the 13th century, 
the royal decrees were written principally in 
Latin. After that time French became usual. 
Now and then, how r ever, after the Conquest, 
English documents and proclamations occur, 
especially those intended for a large public, 
yet, not until the first half of the 15th century 
does the use of English become general in this 
field. In private documents English is very 
rare before 1400. The oldest known will in 
English is executed in 1383 by a candlemaker 
of York. Usually the wills of the nobility are 
written in French, those of the others in Latin. 
Even in the year 1438 a noble lady considers 
it her duty to explain why she has had her will 
written in English. 

§70. The lack of trustworthy accounts from 
olden times makes it impossible to give a review 
of the quality and method of teaching during 
the centuries next after the Conquest. The 
children of the nobility were instructed at home 
or in some other nobleman's house. It goes 
without saying that French was the language of 
instruction in these circles. Often it happened 
that young nobles were sent to France to finish 
their education there. A writer from the be- 
ginning of the 13th century says that this was 
caused "ob linguae nativae barbariem tollen- 
dam," wherein we see a proof of the great dis- 
similarity which existed even then between the 
French language in England and on the Conti- 
nent. We know rather less of the instruction 
in the actual schools, cathedral and monastic, 



72 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

and the endowed grammar schools and uni- 
versities. A great many of the students who 
sought admission to these institutions of learn- 
ing were from purely English homes where 
French was not known; therefore we must be- 
lieve that both languages must have been used 
in instruction. At all events, French plays an 
important role as the language of instruction 
until the middle of the 14th century. The at- 
tempt was made in various statutes to keep 
French in the schools. Between 1320 and 1340 
several colleges at Oxford decided that the stu- 
dents should use Latin and French as their 
means of communication. Such ordinances 
prove that French was losing ground. This was, 
indeed, the case. A writer from 1385 tells us that 
in all the grammar schools of England, the in- 
struction was in English. One benefit of this was 
that the children mastered Latin grammar more 
easily; a disadvantage was that French became 
completely unknown to them. About the same 
time the nobility seem to have discontinued 
the use of French in the education of their 
children. 

§71. During the first two centuries after the 
Norman Conquest, Latin and French literatures 
flourished in England. Several of the English 
kings, especially Henry II and Richard I, were 
zealous admirers and patrons of the French 
courtly poetry. Literature in the native tongue, 
however, led a languishing existence. Not until 
the middle of the 13th century did a national 
feeling awaken, and with it a delight in a na- 
tional literature. From this time on, we see 
how the number of English "works grows from 
year to year, while French gradually disappears 
from the literature of England. At the close 
of the 14th century, the struggle between the 
two languages has been settled; the foreign 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 73 

idiom has been conquered, the native language 
has come to its own. It again becomes the 
language of the whole people, spoken by high 
as well as by low, but its exterior is greatly 
altered. The three hundred years of French 
domination have not passed without leaving a 
trace. 

§72. The French which was spoken in Eng- 
land is usually called in the texts and by the 
historians, lingua gallica, lingua romana, fran- 
ceis, frenche, romance, etc., rarely lingua nor- 
mannica. From numerous accounts we may 
conclude that the French language in England 
began very soon to differ in important par- 
ticulars from even the most nearly related dia- 
lects in France. Even in the 12th century writers 
excuse their poor French* by saying that they 
were reared in England. The French chronicler 
Froissart tells us that during their wars with 
France, the English had difficulty in making 
themselves understood by the French in their 
parleys. Significant, also, is the passage, so 
often quoted, from Chaucer's Prologue to the 
Canterbury Tales, where he speaks of the Pri- 
oresse : 

And Frensh she spak ful f aire and fetisly, 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. 

The poet of course means that the best French 
of the school at Stratford atte Bowe was quite 
unlike that which was spoken in the capital of 
France. Even French authors not infrequently 
make merry over the misuse to which the lan- 
guage is subjected in the mouth of Englishmen, 
and caricature peculiarities in their French 
pronunciation and mode of expression. From 
this we see that the English could not pronounce 
nasal vowels, that many sounds had become 



74 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

silent, that English words were mixed with the 
French and that the syntax had undergone 
radical changes. Comparatively early, guides 
are found in England for the correct use of 
French. 

§73. Technically, the French language in 
English is usually called Anglo-Norman, at 
times also Anglo-French. The former name is 
perfectly justifiable, for though several later 
French works in England bear witness to a 
strong influence from the Continental French, 
probably on account of the author's residence on 
the continent or on account of their train- 
ing under native Frenchmen, yet the older 
Anglo-Norman texts show, as do also the 
majority of the French loan-words which occur 
in ME. before 1400, numerous peculiarities of 
sound which are to be explained by the Norman 
dialect. As examples of such peculiarities, of 
which several are retained in ModE., so that 
this French element may be distinguished from 
the corresponding word in Mod. French, may 
be mentioned : 

Latin en-f-cons. is not merged with an-fcons. 
In ME. texts such words as present, parlement, 
firmament, jugement, moment, etc., rime with 
pure English words as sent, went, lent, etc. — an 
for Latin en occurs in ME. practically exclu- 
sively in cases where Old Norman, through 
analogy or from other causes, had an already, 
as in servant, covenant, recreant, etc. Even 
today English makes a distinction between 
present and servant, while in the standard dia- 
lect of France, before consonants, en and an 
had very early merged. 1 

We have a similar case in words which in 
Vulgar Latin had a closed e in an open stressed 



1) Meyer-Luebke, "Grammatik der romanischen Sprach- 
en," I., p. 105. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 75 

syllable. From this vowel the French very early 
developed the diphthong ei. This diphthong 
was retained in the Norman dialect as in the 
other West French dialects. In Northeast 
France as well as in the He de France, the diph- 
thong underwent a curious change, which is 
written oi; this sign occurs in some cases before 
1100. The loan-words from French as a rule 
show even today ei (ey) or a special English 
development of it; on the contrary, French 
shows in the corresponding words the sign of 
yet its sound value has undergone an important 
change. So we have the pairs: prey-proie, 
veil-voile, fair-foire, leisure-loisir, curtesy-cur- 
toisie, etc. 

Many other facts show that the great mass 
of French loan-words in ME. are of the Norman 
type. Later, especially after the year 1400, when 
French was no longer spoken in England, many 
words from Parisian French occur in English, 
Such importation has continued ever since to 
a greater or less extent, and still continues in 
our own day; likewise, French borrows more 
English words nowadays than formerly. 

§74. The time when a French word won citi- 
zenship in English can usually be determined 
approximately on phonetic grounds alone. But 
often even this does not suffice, especially when 
one has to do with so-called "mots savants," 
that is, words which belong more to the language 
of books than of actual conversation, and which 
are more or less unaffected by the sound-changes 
which the others undergo. Very interesting 
results have been achieved by statistical inves- 
tigations relating to the occurence of French 
words in ME. texts. Yet here it should be 
remembered that the occurrence of a word at a 
certain time does not prove that it was then in 



76 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

colloquial use, just as, on the other hand, a 
word can live in the mouth of the people for 
centuries without occurring in the literature. 

§75. Very early, isolated French words are 
found in English texts. In the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle for the year 1051 we find castelle, 
1135 pais, acorden, 1137 tresor, prisun, justise, 
canceler, etc. Yet during the 12th century the 
number of French words in English texts is 
not great. In Layamon's Brut, which contains 
56,800 verses and is written in Southern Eng- 
land shortly after 1200, about 150 Romance 
words occur; and in the Ormulum, written about 
the same time in the Eastern Midland, the num- 
ber of French words is very small, although 
French influence may be traced. It is obvious 
that the foreign influence would be stronger in 
the South, where the court resided, and where 
the majority of the Normans settled. Thus the 
Ancren Riwle, written at about the same time 
as the Ormulum, shows about 500 French words. 
It is possible that the spoken language in cer- 
tain parts of the land had taken up more loan- 
words even in the 12th century than may be 
concluded from the sparse literature. Then, 
too, individual differences must have played a 
part in it. We have historical proof that even 
then persons of Saxon ancestry loved to em- 
bellish their language with French words to give 
it an elegant finish. 

§76. During the course of the 13th century, 
French words came in in great numbers. In the 
rimed Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, which 
was written near the close of the century, the 
first 500 verses contain about 100 French words, 
and in Robert Mannyng of Brunne, who wrote 
about 1340, we meet, in the same number of 
verses, 170 words of French origin. At the close 
of the 13th century, when English literature 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 77 

awoke to new life after a long, period of decay 
and degradation, there was no real connection 
between it and the point of view and mode of 
expression of the flowering period of OE. litera- 
ture. A language had to be created for literary 
and scientific ends; expressions must be found 
for new conceptions and new cultural matters. 
It is therefore natural that words should be 
adopted in full measure from that language 
which was spoken by the most influential 
men of the land, which gradually became more 
or less known even to wider circles, and which 
was the organ of a great literature. When, in 
the course of the 14th century, French was 
gradually forgotten and the old speech of the 
English nation came again to its own, that lan- 
guage had absorbed thousands of words from 
the French. The language had undergone a 
great change, in that its vocabulary has to show 
an unheard of addition of new elements. One 
can truly, as so often happens, bewail the loss 
of a number of old Germanic words; one must 
recognize the fact — likewise with sorrow — that 
English shows more and more an inclination 
to borrow directly from foreign sources without 
even trying to use its native resources; one can 
feel unpleasantly impressed by the hybrid char- 
acter of the English vocabulary; 1 but on the 
other hand one cannot deny that English, 
through just these foreign elements incorporated 
in the language, has won riches of expression 
for the subtlest thoughts, as well as for the 
concisest, which are hardly to be found in other 
languages. Compare such expressions as wish- 
desire, luck-fortune, bloom-flower, bough- 
branch, deed-act, buy-purchase, blessing-bene- 



1) See later, under treatment of direct loans from the 
classical languages. 



T8 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

diction, begin-commence, sound-safe, beg-pray, 
speech-language, heal-cure, folk-people, storm- 
tempest, etc. 

§77. According to calculations — which must, 
of course, be received with a certain caution — 
the complete English dictionary contains about 
two parts of native Germanic origin and nearly 
five parts of foreign words, mostly French or of 
classical origin. The importance of this curious 
and surprising condition must not, however, be 
exaggerated. A great number of the foreign 
words are rare "bookish" words, technical terms, 
etc. More illuminating as to the real nature 
of the language is an investigation of the per- 
centage of Germanic and Romance words which 
are contained on a page of an author. We find 
that in Milton y who has a distinct preference 
for words of classical origin, and whose entire 
vocabulary consists two-thirds of Romance 
words, each page shows no more than 10 to 30 
per cent of French-Latin origin. One can imag- 
ine a page of ModE. without any Romance 
words, while a page of English without Ger- 
manic words is an unthinkable absurdity. Yet 
it must be conceded that a page of pure Ger- 
manic English would cause its author to rack 
his brains. A tabulation of the proportion in the 
colloquial language, as well as of the occurence 
of Romance words in the dialects, would Be of 
greatest interest. Such an investigation would 
perhaps give us an idea of the relative signifi- 
cance of the Romance element in the different 
parts of England. 

§78. There is scarcely a territory of the 
English vocabulary where at least a few French 
words have not found admission. Some of the 
usual names for relatives are of French origin, 
as uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin. It is more 
remarkable that a French numeral, second, has 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 79 

replaced the native word other in its function 
of ordinal numeral. A number of verbs which 
cannot be dispensed with in the simplest con- 
versation, are loans from the French, such as: 
pay, change, turn, use, pass, touch, promise, 
marry, serve, enjoy, dine, remember, etc., and 
the most usual emphatic word, very, is of French 
origin. 

§79. An examination of the distribution of 
Germanic and French words in certain spheres 
is valuable testimony to the history of culture. 
Among titles, the names of the highest powers 
of the kingdom are of old Germanic origin: 
king, queen; but by the side of these we have 
the French loan-words sovereign, royal, prince, 
realm, government, etc. Knight, lord and lady 
are Germanic words, as earl; but duke, marquis, 
countess, viscount, baron, etc., are French. The 
most usual masculine title, gentleman, shows in 
itself a Romance and Germanic element. 

Many terms from political life are of French 
origin: parliament, peers, commons, privy 
council, yes, even people and nation. Law is 
deluged with French words and expressions: 
court, justice, judge, jury, prison, prisoner, ver- 
dict, sentence, accuse, summon, plead; only a 
few words belonging here, such as witness, are 
of OE. origin; the word law has been borrowed 
from the Norse. 

If we turn to terms of war, we find the names 
of ancient weapons are English: bow, arrow, 
spear, sword, shield. The implements of modern 
warfare, however, bear names imported from 
France: cannon, musket, carbine, bayonet, 
bomb, etc.; likewise, names for the division of 
the troops are French, as: army, corps, regi- 
ment, battalion; also navy, vessel; and of mili- 
tary titles: general, colonel, captain, sergeant, 
corporal, soldier, finally, the words war and 
peace themselves. 



80 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

Scientific terminology is, of course, rich in 
words borrowed from the classical languages. 
Herein English is similar to the other cultural 
languages. Many linguists see a real loss to the 
language in the case of the replacing of Old 
English expressions for religious conceptions by 
words of Romance origin, which naturally can- 
not have the same meaning to the people as the 
etymologically transparent native words: so, 
for example, OE. hselend has given way to sav- 
iour and redeemer, OE. godspellere, to evangel- 
ist, )>riness to trinity. Other examples of eccle- 
siastical words of Romance origin are : religion, 
clergy, parish, sermon, preach, pray, etc. 

If we glance at a more material field, we can- 
not fail to notice the well-known correspon- 
dences: ox-beef, calf -veal, sheep-mutton, pig- 
pork. The animal in the open field retains its 
old Germanic name; prepared and served, how- 
ever, he receives a name from the French — it 
may be, too, on account of the vogue of the 
French art of cookery — cf. the Romance loans 
as boil, roast, fry, etc., and dinner and supper, 

§80. France has given England not only an 
enormous number of words, but prefixes and 
suffixes of Romance or Classical origin are still 
active in English in co-operating to form new 
words, and of such formations, English has a 
very great number. The case is most interesting 
when a Germanic word-stem combines with a 
Romance prefix or suffix. 1 As examples of such 
hybrid compounds may be mentioned : 

a) Romance prefix to Germanic stem: counter- 
weigh, disburden, disheartened, dislike, dis- 
own, embody, enliven, intertwist, subway, 
etc. 



1) Sweet, "New English Grammar," section 1619 r. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 81 

b) Germanic stem with Romance suffix: 
goddess, shepherdess, murderess, leaflet, 
ringlet, streamlet, endearment, fulfilment, 
behavior, unbearable, eatable, murderous. 

§81. Many historians of the language, as 
Koch, 1 have wished to trace French influence 
on English in the development of sounds, forms, 
and sentence structure. Yet it happens that it 
is not difficult to refute most of such statements, 
at least as far as sounds and grammatical forms 
are concerned. As to the development of sound, 
the attempt has sometimes been made to explain 
the palatalization of k- and g- sounds, e. g.> 
ModE., child and bridge, by Norman influence. 
But from very accurate investigation it appears 
likely that this palatalization had already taken 
place in OE. (see §37 above). Neither is the 
extension of the plural sign -s a result of French 
influence. Even in old Northumbrian this end- 
ing shows an unmistakable tendency to push 
into declensions where it is not etymologically 
justified. Just as unsure are many of the other 
assertions of similar kind. ME. syntax, like Old 
French syntax, is still very incompletely investi- 
gated. In syntax, therefore, one must be very 
cautious and not, as often is the case, take refuge 
in the name "French influence" before it has 
been made out that an explanation based on 
English itself is not sufficient. Still, it cannot be 
contested that French has exerted an important 
influence on English syntax and phraseology. 

English is in its structure essentially a 
Germanic language, although its vocabulary 
is partly romance. The words which before 
all others give a language its stamp, the so- 
called form-words, prepositions, pronouns, 



1) "Historische Grammatik der eng-lischen Sprache," 2nd 
Ed., L, 17. 



82 elements of the history 

conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, etc., are of ger- 
manic origin and the structure and innate 
character of the language is not romance, but 
Germanic. 

§82. In this brief outline of the principal 
facts in the development of the English lan- 
guage, we cannot give much time to the many 
and intricate changes which French words have 
undergone in English. The French inflections 
naturally were lost, and as soon as a word won 
acceptance in English, it was relegated to one 
of the inflectional groups in that language. 
Even at that time the inflection of English was 
very simple. The sounds of Romance words 
have undergone many changes in English. First 
of all, we must imagine numerous unconscious 
substitutions of such sounds as had no com- 
plete correspondence in English. After this 
accomodation of the French word to the de- 
mands of the English tongue had taken place, 
as a rule it followed the English words in its 
development. Some details will be men- 
tioned in the next chapter. Yet at first there 
was a hard struggle between the principles of 
Germanic and French accentuation, which were 
radically different. The Germanic accent regu- 
larly falls on the stem syllable of the word, the 
French, on the end syllable. It is, as everyone 
knows, difficult to feel at home in a foreign 
system of accentuation. The more at home 
French words became in English, the more their 
foreign origin grew dim and faded, so much 
the harder was it for them to preserve their 
peculiar accent. The struggle continued during 
many centuries; in the 16th century it may be 
said to be decided, and the words which have 
become English in the fullest sense, have in 
most cases received the accent which they bear 
in ModE. If we compare these words with the 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 83 

corresponding French words we see the effect 
of the Germanic accent law. The accent has 
been shifted to the beginning of the word and 
the accented syllable is stressed with a greater 
intensity than is the case in French, where 
the difference in stress between the syllables 
of a word is comparatively small. This shift 
of accent has occasioned many quantitative 
changes. Vowels which receive the chief stress 
in a word are in certain cases lengthened; more 
frequently unstressed vowels are weakened and 
darkened. Compare the French and English 
pronunication of nation, nature, spectacle, 
ocean, general, final. 

§83. The struggle between the French and 
English principle of accentuation in ME. may 
be most easily studied in the poetical texts, 
where the meter gives the accent. 1 We shall 
cite several verses from Chaucer's Prologue to 
the Canterbury Tales, and shall italicize the 
words of Romance origin, where the accent is 
French and differs from that usual in ModEng: 

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, 
And bathed every veyne in swich licour 
Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 

* *And smale fowles maken melody e, 
That slepen al the night with open ye, 
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages) : 
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 
etc. 

It should be mentioned that Chaucer does not 
always stress a word on the same syllable, but 
uses different modes of accentuation according 
to the demand of the verse. Thus we have an 
example of ModE. accent in "vertu" in the verse 



1) An excellent study of Chaucer's accent is found in ten 
Brink's "Language and Metre of Chaucer." 



84 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

"Sowning in moral vertu was his speche." This 
shows that the conditions of accent in everyday 
speech in Chaucer's time must have been very 
unstable, even conceding that "poetic license" 
does not always have its parallel in the prosaic 
speech of everyday. Even in such poets as 
Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton we meet with 
an exception to ModE. accent once in a while. 
For instance, "and all sixe brethren, borne of 
one parent" (Spenser) ; "Is it upon record or 
else reported — Successively from age to age he 
built it?" (Shakespeare); "Beyond all past ex- 
ample and future" (Milton). 

§84. Even today the Germanic accent has 
not been introduced in every case. If we ex- 
cept the words which have been recently 
adopted into English, and which still appeal 
to the Englishman as foreign, as liqueur, ha- 
rangue — and keep to the old loan-words in com- 
mon use, we find among them such words as 
advice, degree, accord, excess, etc. It is a cu- 
rious fact that in many cases, when the noun 
and verb are alike they are distinguished by 
the accent. It is usual in such cases to accent 
the noun on the first, the verb on the second 
syllable. Such word-pairs are re' cord (n)- 
record' (v), con 'vert-convert ', corivict-convict\ 
dis' count-discount' etc. This useful distinction 
which, however, does not extend to all similar 
cases, is partially based, in all probability, 
on a difference, present even in OE., in accent- 
ing nominal and verbal-compounds. Possibly 
also, the "weighted" verbal endings (-ed, *ing) 
have played their part in causing a shift of 
accent. 

4. INFLUENCE OF LATIN ON ENGLISH. 

§85. Latin has exerted an influence upon 
English, the significance of which can scarcely 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 85 

be overrated. Certain definite periods of the 
Latin influence can be distinguished. 

Even when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes lived 
in their old home on the continent, they, as the 
other Germanic tribes had done, had received 
a number of Latin words. Among the OE. 
words belonging to this group of old loan-words, 
may be named: win, jvvine, Lat. vinum; my net, 
mint, L. moneta; street, street, L. strata {via); 
mil, mile, L. milia (passum) ; mylen, mill, L. 
molina; pund, pound, L. pondus; ynce, inch, L. 
uncia, etc. In the case of certain loan-words, 
the problem is not always easily solved, whether 
they were borrowed before the immigration to 
Britain, or whether the English received them 
from the Romanized Celts; the latter theory is 
accepted for words, as for example : OE. ceaster, 
Lat. castra; port, L. portus; munt, L. montem, 
etc. 

A numerous group of loan-words of classical 
origin is formed in OE. by words which be- 
long to religious or ecclesiastical terminology. 
We" say of "classical" origin, for among these 
loan-words, as among the later loans, we find 
Greek as well as Latin words ; yet in most cases, 
the Greek words have been taken into English 
through Latin, in a more or less Latinized form, 
wherefore, one can, without being guilty of too 
serious an inaccuracy, speak of it as a Latin 
loan-word. It is highly probable that many of 
these words were received into English even 
during the continental period and others during 
the period immediately after the invasion, be- 
fore the English became Christian. To this 
category probably belong: OE. cirice (cyrice), 
church, Greek KvpiaKa; mynster; minister, Lat. 
monasterium; engel, angel, L. angelus; deofol, 
devil, L. diabolus, etc. The great majority of 
ecclesiastical loan-words were however bor- 
rowed after the English themselves had adopted 



86 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

Christianity. Here belong such words as OE. 
papa, pope, Lat. papa; biscop, bishop, L. episco- 
pus; preost, priest, probably from L. presbyter; 
munuc, monk, L. monachus; cleric, clerk, L. 
clericus; creda, creed, L. credo; sacerd, priest, 
L. sacerdos; serin, shrine, L. scrinium, etc. Also 
expressions referring to the province of educa- 
tion belong here, as scol, school, L. schola; 
maegester, master, L. magister. It is interesting to 
note that English has not adopted a foreign 
word for the concept "to write," (Lat. scribere, 
cf. German schreiben, Swed. skrifva), but has 
retained the old writan, really, "to scratch." 
This has been explained from the fact that as the 
writing of runes was in use for a comparatively 
long time in England, the verb which denoted 
the scratching of runes was retained when writ- 
ing on parchment was substituted. Lat. scrib- 
ere was adopted only for a specifically ecclesi- 
astical function, to shrive, OE. serif an. 

Although the older English borrowed not a 
few words for the new religious and ecclesias- 
tical conceptions, yet it is worthy notice that 
in many cases they tried to make the resources 
of their own language do even in this field. 1 
New words were formed from the loan-words 
already adopted, by using native suffixes: 

Sreosthdd, priesthood; cristendom, Christendom, 
lative words which already existed, were used 
with a modified significance, or new compounds 
were formed, which were often peculiarly effec- 
tive. Thus hddian was used for ordinare, ge- 
somnung for congregatio, godspell for evange- 
lium; a scribe, Lat. scriba, was translated by 
bocere; the three Magi were called tungol- 
wltegan (star-wisemen) ; likewise propheta was 
translated by witega; Pharisees were sundor- 
hdlgan (special holy ones). OE. showed a re- 



i) See Jespersen, "Growth and Structure," p. 42f. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 87 

markable power for coining words for new 
cultural ideas from its own materials, while 
later, under altered circumstances, English be- 
gins more and more to seize contributions from 
foreign sources. 

§86. In the preceding we have seen how the 
Norman Conquest and the subsequent rule of 
an upper class which spoke French, led the de- 
velopment of the English language into new 
paths. The native cultural and literary tradi- 
tions were broken, and when the mother tongue 
was again cultivated, after the time of its help- 
lessness had passed, the supremacy of French 
speech and French culture appeared in a whole- 
sale adoption of loan-words. Hereby, however, 
the way was paved for a new period of Latin 
influence, far more powerful than those of 
which we have already spoken. Even among 
the countless Romance loan-words which flowed 
into England during the Middle Ages, it is 
sometimes very difficult to distinguish the 
French from Latin words. French itself is a 
development of the Vulgar Latin, and very early 
the French language begins to add to its vo- 
cabulary by borrowing from the literary Latin, 
which during this time played a great role 
throughout Western Europe as the language of 
the schools and of culture. Very early French 
shows such "mots savants," bookish words, 
which, however, harmonized so well with the 
actual vocabulary of the people that it takes 
a philologist to distinguish the two sorts of 
words. When these words occur in English, it 
is naturally difficult to say whether the loan is 
due to French or whether the word was bor- 
rowed directly from the Latin. A closer study 
of the English words belonging here seems to 
show that during the later ME. period the im- 
mediate influence of Latin on the English Ian- 



88 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

guage was very great. And this is quite natural, 
when one thinks that the Renaissance begins to 
make itself felt in England even in the 14th 
century. Latin, powerful throughout the Middle 
Ages, appeared to cultivated and literary men 
even more than ever the model which one 
should copy. It is little more than natural, 
that a language like English, which had become 
accustomed to infinitely great loans from French 
and which by means of French "mots savants" 
had already adopted numbers of Classical Latin 
words, would begin more and more to employ 
he convenient means of borrowing directly from 
the rich treasury of Latin. 

An investigation of the Romance vocabulary 
of the literary men and scholars in England in 
the latter half of the 14th century, as Chaucer, 
Wyclif, or Trevisa, makes it plain that these 
writers have without a doubt borrowed numer- 
ous words directly from Latin and have adapted 
them to the demands of the English language. 1 
Among the Latin words and phrases which we 
first meet in Chaucer, are the verbs: add, cor- 
rect, divide, expel, object, reduce (we give the 
ModE. spelling) ; further, series, conspiracy, for- 
tunate, delicate; in Wyclif occur, for example: 
colony, coffin, destitute, exclude; in Trevisa, ab- 
stract, apt, abbreviate, conflict, consecrate, de- 
tect, submit. Beside the new words taken from 
Latin, then and later might be seen many French 
words latinized, i. e., they are given a form in 
accordance with their Latin etymon. Thus 
Chaucer uses equal by the side of egal, and 
later, we see that perfect is used instead of 
parfit, describe for descrive, adventure for aven- 
ture, etc. At times a word has been given a 
false etymology, as in the words, now good 
English, advance, advantage, as if the original 

1) See Dellit, "Ueber lateinische Elemente im Mitteleng-- 
lischen." 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 89 

word were connected with Latin ad-, while in 
Ihis case the French avant comes from ab-ante. 

When at the beginning of the Modern Era the 
humanistic movement was advancing victor- 
iously, the direct importation of Latin words 
became even more general than before; these 
borrowings from the Latin gradually overflowed 
all bounds, so that one of the best scholars of 
the history of the English language is able to 
say that the whole Latin vocabulary became 
"potentially English. 1 

To enumerate examples here is scarcely worth 
while. It is hardly possible to compute the 
number of words which came into English dur- 
ing this period. Different authors proceed in 
different ways; while some observe moderation 
and restraint, others go to excess in using Latin, 
some even, from our modern point of view, so 
latinize their English that it becomes simply 
ludicrous. Many of the Latin words which were 
adopted into English during the period of hu- 
manism, have disappeared from use. Others 
have become so common that they must be 
considered as belonging to the everyday voca- 
bulary. It is interesting to see how even during 
the later Middle Ages, glossaries appear in order 
to explain "hard" words. Likewise it happens 
later that even authors themselves explain by 
means of notes certain words which are hard for 
readers to understand. Among the words which 
Tindall, the translator of the Bible, explains 
thus, are: grace, firmament, consecrate, recon- 
cile, and in contemporary books, words such as 
the following are termed obscure or rare: 
accident, inspiration, industry, modesty, temper- 
ance, local, insensible, obscure, numerous ; and 
Ben Jonson, in his Poetaster, ridicules such 
words as conscious, defunct and strenuous. For 
still later times may be mentioned Dr. Johnson's 

1) See Bradley, "The Making" of English," p. 94. 



90 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

well-known love for long and learned Latin 
words. On the other hand, at intervals a reac- 
tion has taken place against an exaggerated 
Latin style. 

The words borrowed from Latin have adapted 
themselves, as far as the sound is concerned, to 
the native words, and to the French words bor- 
rowed earlier — the traditional school pronuncia- 
tion of Latin in England is still English to a high 
degree. We cannot here go into detail concern- 
ing the typical forms which were generally used 
in incorporating Latin words into English. Cer- 
tain suffixes have shown themselves especially 
productive, as for example adjectives in -ous 
and -al -.continuous, voracious, obnoxious, la- 
borious; celestial, political, individual, etc., and 
among verbs, especially noteworthy is the type 
which is derived from the Latin Perfect Par- 
ticiple : narrate, consecrate, separate, protect, 
elect, convict, etc. The derivatives and new 
formations, which have been made from Latin 
material on English soil, are without number. 

The enormous development" of science and 
technical knowledge in the last century has led 
to the creation of an unheard of wealth of term- 
inology wherein Greek material, especially, is 
used, being particularly capable of forming 
compound words. This sort of word is inter- 
national property, so it is not necessary to give 
examples. 

§87. Other languages than those mentioned 
above have given their tribute to the English 
vocabulary, as for example Spanish and Italian, 
especially during the earlier part of the Modern 
English period; as well as many exotic lan- 
guages, which, besides certain products, give the 
European languages the names of those pro- 
ducts. But we cannot enter into a further dis- 
cussion of such words in this brief sketch. 



IV 



The Development of the English Language 
Since the Year 1100 



1. INTRODUCTION. 

§88. The following review of the develop- 
ment of English sounds and forms in ME. and 
ModE. confines itself for the most part to the 
more general features of the history of the lan- 
guage. The many dialects of ME. are far from 
completely investigated, the study of the sounds 
is full of the most difficult problems and the 
rise of standard English and its relation to the 
dialects is obscure in more than one point. 
Consequently we shall overlook a mass of de- 
tails and must content ourselves with mention- 
ing the most important facts in the development 
of sound and form. We shall deal chiefly, 
though not exclusively, with the Germanic mate- 
rial in the language. 

§89. ME. Dialects are the legitimate de- 
scendants of OE. dialects, though the grammar- 
ians generally call them by different names. 
Usually they are divided into a Northern, a Mid- 
land and a Southern dialect. Many subdivisions 
might be made; thus, for example, it has been 
usual to distinguish an East Midland and a West 
Midland, which are not, however, sharply di- 
vided. The Southern dialect corresponds to the 



92 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

Saxon dialects and Old Kentish. We find many 
indications that the dialectic differences were so 
great that an inhabitant of Southern England 
would have great trouble in understanding any- 
one speaking a Northern dialect. A strong mix- 
ture of dialects took place in London, which in 
its quality of capital and center of trade, furn- 
ished a meeting-place for persons from various 
dialect districts. 1 The influence from the North 
made itself felt more and more, so that the lan- 
guage of the metropolis toward the end of the 
ME. period stood much nearer the Midland than 
the Southern, and must in the main be consid- 
ered as a Midland dialect. 

§90. The Texts from which we get oul 
knowledge of ME., are very numerous but of 
widely differing value for philological investi- 
gation. Many MSS. from the 12th century are 
to be considered as being modernized copies of 
OE. originals and show a curious blending of 
older and younger forms, which surely neve! 
existed side by side in any spoken language. 
A carefully written text is the Ormulum, a long 
poem from about the year 1200; its importance 
for the knowledge of ME. sounds and forms is 
extraordinarily great, especially on account of 
its consistently phonetic orthography, which its 
author consciously and carefully uses through-' 
out. The dialect is East Midland. The Northern 
dialect is represented, among other works, by 
the long poem Cursor Mundi (ca. 1300), by a 
metrical translation of the Psalter, and by Rich- 
ard Rolle of Hampole's (fl349) Pricke of Con- 
science. From the Scotch literature may be 
mentioned Barbour's Bruce (ca. 1375). Among 
the texts from Southern England should espe- 
cially be mentioned Layamon's Brut (ca. 1200) 



1) Sweet, "New English Grammar," section 620. Kluge, 
"Grundriss," 2nd Ed., I., p. 947. 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 93 

and the Ancren Riwle, i. e., the Rule of the An- 
choresses, from the beginning of the 13th cen- 
tury, remarkable for its pure and liquid prose 
style; a Western form of Southern is Robert 
of Gloucester's Rime Chronicle (ca. 1300) ; the 
most important Kentish text in Middle English 
times is the Ayenbite of Inwit (1340). In the 
writing of Wyclif and Chaucer (see below) the 
beginning, or at least a preparatory stage, of 
standard English is to be seen. 

§91. We have mentioned before that during 
the ME. period the peculiarities of the Midland 
dialect pressed farther southward and espe- 
cially the language of the metropolis took on 
more and more a Midland character. We must, 
therefore, find as a matter of course that the 
literary language which at the close of the ME. 
period began to rise above the other dialects 
and which became the property of the whole 
English nation was, in the main, Midland in 
character, although other dialects have contrib- 
uted to it. The rise of Standard English cannot 
be said to be perfectly clear. In the creation and 
fixing of the literary language, an important 
role has been ascribed to Chaucer (fl400). He 
was nourished and grew up in London. He 
wrote his extensive works in that dialect which 
was familiar to him from childhood, and thus 
gave it an extraordinary literary reputation. 
When one knows in what high estimation the 
later poets held Chaucer as a master, one can- 
not overvalue his significance in the develop- 
ment of a poetic and literary style. If we com- 
pare Chaucer's English with the Standard Eng- 
lish of today, we find that the similarities are 
very great, yet points of difference are not lack- 
ing. If we except mere lexical changes, such as 
will naturally be felt in every language in the 
course of five hundred years, and certain sim- 



94 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

plifications in the form system (to which we 
shall return later), we can characterize the dif- 
ferences between Chaucer's language and Mod- 
ern English thus, that in Chaucer we find several 
specifically Southern peculiarities, which later 
disappeared from the literary language and 
which, even in his time, were lost in the North- 
ern, and to some extent also in the Midland dia- 
lects. Thus Chaucer uses for the G. Plur. 3rd 
Pers. Pronoun the old form here and in D. Plur. 
hem, while in Midland and Northern, the forms 
their and them, resulting from Norse influence, 
were used in their place, and these later won 
acceptance in Standard English. In the N. Plur. 
of the same pronoun, Chaucer has, however, 
they, not the older form hi which occurs, for ex- 
ample, in Robert of Gloucester. 

§92. Another man beside Chaucer has with- 
out a doubt played a part in the development of 
a common literary language, the famous theol- 
ogian John Wyclif Cfl384). Some scholars 
have wished to ascribe to Wyclif a greater im- 
portance in the development of Standard Eng- 
lish than to Chaucer. In this, however, they 
undoubtedly go too far. 1 It is true that a trans- 
lation of the Bible must, as a literary norm, 
reach a wider circle than Chaucer's poems. But 
Wyclif, who was a native of Yorkshire, passed 
his manhood in Oxford, and did not write in 
that dialect which was his from childhood. He 
was certainly a great religious and national 
teacher, but was never remarkable for his mas- 
tery of the language. Chaucer, however, wrote 
as he and his circle talked, and had by nature 
a wonderful talent for treating his mother 
tongue artistically. Wyclif's friends and collab- 
orators in the translation of the Bible were from 



1) Ten Brink, "Language and Metre of Chaucer," Intro- 
duction. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 95 

different parts of England. The language of 
this translation, then, does not offer the same un- 
ified character as does Chaucer's work. Finally, 
it must not be forgotten that the religious move- 
ment awakened by Wyclif was interrupted by a 
strong orthodox reaction, so we cannot speak of 
an uninterrupted literary tradition descending 
from him. Chaucer, however, became the great 
model for the succeeding literature in English. 
With full recognition of Wyclifs importance as 
the one who prepared great masses of the peo- 
ple for the reception of a common literary lan- 
guage, we must concede that Chaucer played a 
more important part than he in the history of 
the rise of Standard English. 

§93. Yet now it is the general opinion that 
the importance of both Wyclif and Chaucer for 
the development of a standard language has 
been overestimated, and that the origin of that 
language is to be sought elsewhere, namely, in 
the public-offices and in the language of official 
correspondence. Since about the year 1400, the 
domination of French was broken and English 
came into its own in the different spheres of 
official life, it was natural that the capital — the 
seat of the government, parliament and the 
highest courts of justice — should make its influ- 
ence all the more felt in the sphere of language, 
and that the charters and letters which were is- 
sued from the offices at London should come to 
have the importance of a norm in fixing the 
usage of written English. Investigations of the 
language of the London official documents, as 
well as those from different parts of England, 
show this to be a fact. Toward the close of the 
15th century the proclamations from the prov- 
inces of England show a form of language which 
differs greatly from the local dialect and which 
substantially approaches the language of Lon- 
don. 



96 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

The definite rise of the language of London 
to the common written language of the whole 
land was mightily aided by the introduction of 
the art of printing by William Caxton in 1476, 
Caxton, who was not only a printer, but a dili- 
gent translator as well, strove expressly to avoid 
provincialisms and to keep to that form of the 
language in his printing, which was spoken by 
the cultured classes of the metropolis; he adopt- 
ed, as he himself said, "our englysshe not ouer 
rude ne curyous," but "suche termes as shall be 
vnderstanden." A comparison of the language 
of Caxton and Chaucer reveals the fact that the 
language — as far as one can judge — has become 
more "Northern" in type; in this particular, 
ModE. since Caxton's time has made further ad- 
vances. 

Caxton's attempts and, one may say, the activ- 
ity of printing thereafter, helped very greatly 
to regulate the uniform language. Yet the or- 
thography, not only in Caxton's time, but for 
several centuries thereafter, was far from sta- 
ble; but a certain lapse of time is necessary 
within which a normal language can become 
fixed. As the first important ModE. work, 
one usually considers TindalFs translation of the 
New Testament, from the year 1525. During the 
time before Elizabeth's accession to the throne 
we can see that the literary language had won a 
general and undisputed recognition in England. 
This language in the course of time became also 
the speech of the cultivated people, or at least 
that to which they approximated. Even in the 
16th century we have phonetic descriptions of 
the English sounds, made by natives of widely 
different districts, but evidently striving to de- 
pict the same sound, i. e., the language of the 
cultivated. Yet we must concede that our 
knowledge of the standard language as a spoken 
language is as yet very incomplete. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 97 

§94. The substantially Midland character of 
Standard English is evident from a comparison 
between its sound system and that of the mod- 
ern dialects. 1 In many dialects we find pecu- 
liarities which prove that those dialects have ex- 
erted no influence worth naming upon the 
standard language. The southeasternmost part 
of England, especially Kent, has replaced the 
spirant th by d.dis, dat, dorn, etc., for this, that, 
thorn. Southwestern England has a voiced u 
and z at the beginning of a word, where the 
standard language has voiceless f and s: viye, 
vish, vox, 2 for five, fish, fox; zea, zailor, zing 
for sea, sailor, sing. Southeastern England has 
furthermore preserved the e-sound in words as 
deal, meat, clean and the F-sound in shine, child, 
etc. Northern England has likewise many pecu- 
liarities foreign to standard English as the 
undiphthonged u in house, round, cow, down, 
etc. Southern (especially Southwestern) as well 
as Northern dialects seem not to have played a 
very important role in the development of the 
standard language, although certain dialectic 
forms have found acceptance in it. 

§95. Scotland, whose English dialects come 
from the old Northumbrian, had for a long time 
its separate literary language, whose oldest 
classical poet is considered to be Barbour, a con- 
temporary of Chaucer. Yet very early the influ- 
ence of Standard English made itself felt in Scot- 
land. The writings of the reformer Knox are 
full of Anglicisms. After the j^ear 1600 the vic- 
tory of English was assured. 

§96. In ME. times, OE. orthography was grad- 
ually supplanted by an orthography strongly in- 

1) See Kluge, Paul's "Grundriss," 2nd Ed., I., p. 946. 

2.) ModE. "vixen," fern, of "fox," is thus a dialectal form 
adopted into the standard language, as also "vat" and 
4, vane.' ' 



98 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

fluenced by French. The old letter y became the 
sign for an /-sound and was used side by side 
with the letter L The English {/-sound, as far as 
it still existed, was then denoted in the French 
manner by u. So it comes that y- and u-sounds 
were denoted by the same letter; in South Eng- 
lish texts, consequently, sunne corresponds to 
OE. sunne, sun, as well as to OE. synn, sin. In the 
greater part of England, however, OE. y became 
i very early, and thus in Mod. E., sun and sin 
are clearly distinguished as well in pronuncia- 
tion as in spelling. In certain cases the long y- 
sound is denoted by ui; as well in French fruit 
as in English builden, build. The letter y be- 
comes, as has been said above, a variant for i; it 
is used especially at the end of a word: many, 
day, etc., but often also in other positions, as in 
bynden. In Norman French, o occurs as a sign for 
a w-sound; for this reason o began to replace u 
in many purely English words, especially in 
proximity to m, n, u(u) to avoid graphic errors; 
thus they wrote comen for OE. cuman, loue 
(love) for OE. lufu. In conformity with French 
usage, they began to denote long-« with ou: 
house, <0E. hus; mouth, <OE. mu]>; broun 
(brown) 9 <OIL. brun, etc. 

In OE., c was the sign for many sorts of sounds 
(see §37) . In French, since long before the Nor- 
man Conquest, c before e and i had no longer 
the sound of k, consequently in ME. the &-sound 
before these two vowels is denoted by kikene, 
kepen, king, kin, etc.; in French loan-words 
c before e, i has the sound of s, certain, city; in 
place of cw, qu is used: queue; in other posi- 
tions c is generally retained: comen, dene, craft; 
for OE. c in cases where it had become palatal- 
ized, ch is written: chirche, QR.cirice; child, OE. 
cild, etc. ; instead of OE. eg in ME. gg is written, 
later the spelling dg becomes usual; bridge, OE. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 99 

brycg; edge, OE. ecg. The same sound when 
initial, in a Romance loan-word is written g or j : 
gentle, giant, jealous, just. Only in ModE. times 
have the letters i and j been consistently distin- 
guished. In ME., sch, or sh is written for OE. 
sc; ModE. has sh: fish, OE. fisc; sharp, OE. 
scearp. The so-called ich- and ac/i-sounds were 
denoted, after much indecision, by gh (OE. h) : 
right, doghter; instead of hw, wh is written. 
ME. often uses the old g(j) for the ModE. 
z/-sound; later y begins to be used: year, 
yield, young. The runic J? is used during the 
whole of the ME. period, yet in the course of 
time th becomes the usual sign for this spirant, 
voiced as well as voiceless. For the y-sound, 
v(u) begins to be used in ME., instead of OE. 
f:loue (love), OE. lufu; u and u are not consist- 
ently differentiated until ModE. times. 

§97. These radical changes in orthography 
give ME. a very different appearance from OE. 
The orthography adopted in ME. has been pre- 
served in its main features until the present. 
This conservatism in the English orthography 
naturally makes the study of the history of 
sounds very difficult. While in the 15th cen- 
tury in Germany the diphthongs ei, au, from 
MHG. i, u, quickly won a place in the orthogra- 
phy, English continues even today to denote its 
diphthongs, which are the same as in German, by 
the old signs. Likewise, e, ee, ea continue to be 
written in words where for a long time an 
/-sound has been pronounced. 

§98. During the whole ME. period and in 
older ModE., the orthography is very unstable, 
certain MSS. evincing a hopeless chaos. But 
when books were printed and distributed in 
great quantity, the orthography began gradually 
to become fixed and a hundred years ago was 



100 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

practically the same as now. We must bewail 
the fact that at the time of the fixing of the or- 
thography no greater respect was paid to the 
actual pronunciation. It is not only in our own 
times that the English pronunication is far re- 
moved from the spelling. The standard orthog- 
raphy has never been consistent and was even in 
the 16th century so unphonetic that more than 
one thoughtful Englishman zealously urged an 
orthographical reform. The account which 
these phoneticians give of the pronunciation, 
and their plan for a method of notation, re- 
mained without practical result, but their writ- 
ings are of the greatest value to us as the most 
important sources for our knowledge of the 
English pronunciation at that time. Likewise, 
more than once the government and the univer- 
sities have been appealed to, to be induced to 
take the initiative in a spelling reform. Yet so 
far reformers have not been able to achieve 
results. 

2. DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH SOUNDS. 

§99. In the discussion of the OE. vowels 
(§31) it was pointed out that before certain con- 
sonant-groups, a lengthening of originally short 
stem-vowels took place. This lengthening 
process, which seems to have developed grad- 
ually in the course of a long period of time, is 
most completely established before nd and Id, 
but occurs also before other consonant groups. 
Thus ME. received as an inheritance from the 
preceding period forms such as bindan, findan, 
blind, hund, bunden, milde, wilde, gold, etc. 
Doubling a letter and using the accent in OE. 
and ME. MSS., sufficiently proves the preval- 
ence of such lengthenings; yet, as has been aL- 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 101 

ready noticed, opposite tendencies make their 
weight felt at times, so that the results in Stan- 
ard English are not uniform. 

§100. In the ME. period new lengthenings 
occur, in that OE. a, e, o in open syllables are 
developed to a, e, 6. Until about the year 1200 
the old short vowels seem to exist; at any rate 
it is the case in the Ormulum, where the quan- 
tities are very carefully and consistently given. 
But in the middle of the 13th century, lengthen- 
ing begins to make itself felt in the meter, and 
the later development fully confirms the con- 
clusions which may be made by aid of the rimes 
of the Middle English poets. Upon this length- 
ening depend such ME. forms as name, late, 
sake, bathe (n), make(n), speke, mete, hope, 
broken, etc. The vowels i and u do not as a 
rule submit to this process (writen, dide, sune) ; 
it is true that the exceptions, which we cannot 
discuss here, are not always to be explained. 
Also the lengthening of a, e, o is counteracted 
by other tendencies and is very uncertain in 
words of the type of fader, sadel, even, etc. 

§101. On the other hand, shortening of 
originally long stem-vowels occurs before cer- 
tain consonant groups. These shortenings, 
which are very difficult to distinguish by the aid 
of MSS., and whose chronology is doubtful in 
more than one particular, have developed in 
widely different periods in the history of Eng- 
lish. We cannot enter here into a closer exami- 
nation of these intricate relations. A great part 
of these shortenings occur even in the oldest pe- 
riod of ME.; here belongs, for example, the 
shortening of the stem-vowel in the verbal in- 
flection : ME. kepen-kepte, slepen-slepte, as well 
as brohte, sohte, etc., together with the shorten- 
ing of a long stem-vowel in a word when it en- 



102 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

ters into a compound, as: husbonde and huswif, 
from hiis, and wisdom from wis, etc. Very nu- 
merous are the shortenings before st and sh 
(OE. sc). OE. dust consequently corresponds to 
ModE. dust, OE. fyst to fist, OE. wyscan to wis/i, 
OE. /7#>sc to flesh, OE. breost to breast. 

Even much later occur a number of shifts in 
the quantity of vowels. In the 16th century the 
grammarians give varying quantitities for many 
common words, as health, heaven, father, have, 
water, give, love, etc. And even in our own day 
cases are not lacking where the vowels are of 
unstable quantity. 

§102. Of the history of the development of 
the separate vowels only the most general out- 
lines can be given here. Germanic a in OE. 
underwent many changes. It occurs as a, again 
as £e, ea and o. This last variant even in OE. 
times returns to a in great measure, yet in certain 
cases, o remains even in Mod E. : long, strong. 
In earliest ME. se and ea also return to the 
original a, so that in ME. w r e must take the simple 
vowel again as our point of departure. ME. a 
undergoes in an open syllable the lengthening to 
a already mentioned in §100; OE. macian, ME. 
mdken, OE. hatian>haten, nama>ndme, etc. 
Toward the end of the ME. period a, as well as a, 
shows in most positions a palatal sound which 
later develops further, without, however, re- 
ceiving a new orthographic sign. At present the 
short vowel, when regularly developed, has the 
sound of a in man, can, glad, hallow, narrow. 
The long vowel has in ModE. shifted to e, which 
since the beginning of the 19th century, has be- 
gun to become a diphthong eimame, make, hate, 
take; so also in many Romance words: age, 
grace, blame, nation, change. Before r, how- 
ever, this sound has remained a half-open 
g-sound: care, hare, dare, prepare, various. In 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 103 

certain cases the development of short-a has 
been exposed to various influences from neigh- 
boring sounds. Before // or /+consonant 
(where first of all a diphthong seems to have re- 
sulted, see §111), a very open sound, between a 
and o, is the rule : all, fall, talk (though not with 
/+labial, where the pure a is the rule : calf, half, 
alms, calm). After w, as a rule, a has a dark 
sound between a and o: was, warm, swarm, 
swallow, warrant (yet if a guttural follows the a 
it is regularly short: wag, wax). Before r (not 
followed by a vowel) and before the voiceless 
spirants f, s, th, a has become lengthened: car, 
bar, arm, art, staff, craft, glass, ask, pass, path. 
Besides, long-a is the standard pronunciation of 
many French words with nasalized-a: demand, 
chance. 

§103. OE. a, to which we add also the early 
lengthened vowels in did, hdlden, etc., where 
WS. breaking-ea has reverted to a, begins even 
in the 12th century in South England to take on 
a dark quality of tone, nearer to an o. This 
change progresses and makes itself felt in the 
Midland, but not in Northumbrian. Even a in 
Norse loan-words followed the same law of de- 
velopment, which led next to an open-p. Later 
the vowel became closed, and since the beginning 
of the 19th century has become a diphthong 
(6u) : stone, home, bone, old, cold, road, 1 oak, 
go, pope, Pret. drove, rode, (OE. stdn, ham, ban, 
etc.) The same development is found in the 
short-o which is lengthened in ME. to g -.spoken 
broken, hope, smoke; further, many Romance 
words : vote, joke, motion, etc. Before r the de- 
velopment has been arrested at an open-p : more, 
sore, oar, roar, restore, glory; also in broad. Un- 
der the influence of a neighboring w in several 



1) "oa" is an attempt to denote the long open o-sound, 
which, however, has not been consistently adopted. 



104 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

words o became closed very early and shifted 
to u, like OE. 6 (see §104): who, two, (OE. 
hwd, two) . A curious dialectic pronunciation is 
found in one (=won) 9 OE. an, as also in once 
(but only, alone, with the normal sound) . 

§104. OE. 6 continues in the main unaltered 
during ME. times. Gradually, however, it be- 
comes more and more closed, until in ModE. it 
has the value u (i. e., the socalled Eatin-w, French 
ou) : doom, cool, moon, do; and in Romance 
words, as move, prove, fool, etc. In several 
words vowel-shortening is found in oldest 
ModE., which in its subsequent development 
follows short u: brother, mother, other, flood, 
glove. Of much later date is the shortening in 
words such as good and book, where the change 
in quantity does not occasion any change in the 
quality of the vowel. 

§105. OE. o has been retained, as a rule, up 
to our own times: God, fox, ox, follow, sorrow. 
The o sound which in open syllables was length- 
ened in ME., became identical with the o<OE. a 
(see § 103) . Likewise, recently, o before //-final 
and before /+consonant, probably by means of 
a stage ou, has developed the sound 6>6u: toll, 
folk, molten, roll. O has undergone a develop- 
ment analogous to that in far, path, etc. (§102), 
when before the same sort of consonant and 
consonant combinations, where a long open g 
sound has resulted : for, corn, fork, together with 
oft, often, cross, cost, broth. 

OE. u is retained in ME. It is reinforced by 
OE. y in certain positions: OE. my eel, ME. 
muche, much; OE. swylc>such, as also especial- 
ly French u: duchess, subject, punish. Yet in 
the 16th century, according to the testimony of 
phoneticians, a pure u-sound was usual in but, 
mud, lust, much, full, put, etc. This sound is 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 105 

often denoted in print by o, oo, ou : come, some, 
London, worm, wood, double, touch. During 
the following centuries this sound in various en- 
vironment and in part by obscure means, has 
developed in various directions. In proximity 
to labials and /, it has retained its original qual- 
ity: full, wolf, wood, put; in most other cases 
it has lost it (becomes unrounded) and approx- 
imates the European a-sound: but, mud, come, 
double, touch, London. Before r the u-sound, 
like e and i, has undergone lengthening and has 
been modified to ^: spur, curse, worm, worth, 
further, journey, turn. 

§106. OE. i, with w^hich very early, in most 
dialects, y is levelled, remains regularly un- 
altered: sit, bid, fill, kin, as also Romance din- 
ner, resist, city. Before r in ModE. i has 
developed like u : bird, first, birch, firm, circle. 

§107. A short e, which has been affected by 
none of the sorts of lengthening, has regularly 
remained e : help, set, send. Here belong also 
those words w T hich in OE. have an eo<e that in 
early ME. becomes again the monophthong e: 
ME. kerven <OE. ceorfan, ME. sterre<OE. steor- 
ra, etc.; further, Romance words as press, pres- 
ent, merit, etc. Yet it must be noticed that toward 
the close of the ME. period, e before r in many 
cases becomes a: ME. ferre> ModE. far, sterre> 
star, kerve (n) > carve, sterve (n) > starve, Fr. 
merveil> marvel. The new sound is not con- 
sistently denoted in the orthography: heart, 
hearth. Later in ModE. e before r develops like 
i to g: herd, earl earnest. Pret. heard, err, 
serve, person. In ModE. thus, the same sound 
has been developed in her, fir, fur. 

The history of the long e-sounds is too intricate 
to explain fully here. We will confine ourselves 



106 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

to the most important elements in its develop- 
ment. ME. distinguishes between an open and 
a closed long e sound : g and e. 

1. The open § sound results from various OE. 
sounds such as 

a) the umlaut-^: OE. da>lan>d§len, cliene, 
eigne. 

b) OE. WS. se (WGerm. a) ; since, however, 
Anglian and Kentish had here an e, it is clear 
that in the ME. texts there must be a great 
amount of confusion, so that, for example, 
words like ded, slepen, occur with g as well as 
with e: 

c) The OE. diphthong ea, which early became 
a monophthong: Agp<OE. heap, b§m<beam; 

d) The lengthening of OE. e in open syllables 
(§100) spoken, mgte, and 

e) numerous Romance loan-words; bgste, 
beast, c§se, cease. 

2. Closed e comes from 

a) OE. e (original e, umlaut of 6, Anglian- 
Kentish umlaut of ea or Anglian-Kentish equiva- 
lent of WS. se etc.) : her, demen, feden, Plur. ges, 
her en (WS. hleran, Angl. he ran) ; 

b) OE. eo which became early a monoph- 
thong: tre (OE. treo), lef (OE. leof) ; 

c) Numerous Romance words : degre, bef, etc. 

The spellings in ME. are peculiarly irregular 
and cannot be treated in greater detail here. 
It must be mentioned that the open and closed 
sounds as such were sharply distinguished from 
one another, but that not a few words seem to 
have alternated between the two sounds in pro- 
nunciation. Before r the preference seems to 
be for the open sound. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 107 

The distinction was long retained in ModE. 
though even here in many words the two pronun- 
ciations seem to have alternated for a long time. 
The closed e-sound seems to have become an i- 
sound towards the beginning of the ModE. pe- 
riod; on the contrary, the open g in cultivated 
speech retained an e-sound, although it gradual- 
ly became closed. After 1700 this sound likewise 
became an f-sound and thus the two sounds 
completely coincided. ModE. orthography bears 
witness to the inconsistent attempt to denote 
the two sounds at the time when they were yet 
distinguished in pronunciation. Most important 
is the mode of denoting the open sound, very 
common in older ModE., ea; while ee and ie are 
often used for the closed sound. In ModE., 
especially when we examine the Romance vo- 
cabulary, we have a gay profusion of spellings 
for the now single sound: me, he, feet, deep, 
thief, grief, receive, deal, leave, stream, hear, 
appear, people. 

In certain cases the development of the open 
sound did not get so far as the f-sound. So, 
first of all, in a number of words, before r, where 
the pronunciation is now g (as in care) : bear, 
tear, wear, there. Furthermore, a probably 
originally dialectic pronunciation ei (as in 
name) obtains in the words break and great. In 
conclusion it may be noted that comparatively 
early a number of words were shortened, so that 
now we have a short e in the pronunciation, 
especially in many words before a dental conso- 
nant: dead, bread, tread, red, death, deaf. 

§108. One of the most important differences 
between the spoken and written language in 
Modern German and MHG., is the diphthonga- 
tion of the long vowels, I, u, ii (MHG. written 
in) : MHG. zit, Zeit, hus, Haus, hiute, heute. The 



108 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

new sounds have received a — truly no longer 
satisfactory — sign in the orthography. In Eng- 
lish a similar development of I (with which 
OE. y, in most parts of England had become 
identical) and u has taken place, but the old 
spelling has been retaind. Diphthongation may 
have begun in the Southern dialects toward the 
end of the ME. period. Some grammarians of 
Elizabeth's time give the value of the new sounds 
as ei and ou; some are more conservative. In 
our own times the first element of the diphthong 
is more nearly like a : ai, au. Ex. bind, time, rise, 
wine, hide, provide, by; house, bound, mouth, 
cow. 1 Diphthongs have found entrance also 
in knight, night, might, right, high, etc., after the 
palatal spirant has become silent and a length- 
ening of the preceding vowel has taken place. 

§109. The English language has always 
shown a strong inclination to reduce unstressed 
syllables. Even OE. has only short vowels in 
inflectional syllables. During the transition pe- 
riod 1050-1150, occurred the radical process 
which caused all end-vowels to be levelled 
to e. Herein ME. coincides with MHG. At the 
end of a word e becomes most general in ME., 
especially through analogical formations. 

Even in the ME. period final -e begins to 
become silent. The Northern dialects are ex- 
treme in this development; as early as the 14th 
century e has disappeared there, while in the 
Southern dialects this process occurs somewhat 
later. Chaucer's verse offers proof that e was 
even then frequently silent. In the 16th cen- 
tury e was, according to the witness of gram- 
marians, silent at the close of a word; also e 



1) "ou," "ow" are not signs of a diphthong; they occur 
even in a time when undoubtedly "u" was pronounced. See 
section 96. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 109 

in the ending -es was even then silent to 
about the same extent as today. The loss of 
e is one of the most important changes in the 
history of English sounds. It has made count- 
less words monosyllabic and has radically al- 
tered the English verse-construction. When 
suffix e had become silent, it came to be used 
as a means of denoting the length of a vowel 
in the preceding syllable. This consequently 
has been annexed by numbers of words where 
it has no etymological justification, as wife< 
wif, wine<win, stone <stdn, etc. 

§110. In earlier ME., possibly to some extent 
in OE., certain consonants when immediately 
preceded by a vowel, themselves gradually be- 
come vowels in certain cases. These newly 
formed vowels form diphthongs with the pre- 
ceding vowel. In this manner ME. receives a 
number of diphthongs, which later are gener- 
ally fused to long vowels. The most important 
cases belonging here are the following: 

A palatal spirant (j, in OE. denoted by the 
same letter as g) becomes i; a guttural g — which 
after a vowel was also spirant — became u. 
Further, often between a vowel and a following 
h was developed a glide, which may develop 
to a true vowel and form a diphthong with the 
preceding vowels. Thus from OE. dseg we get 
ME. dai, nsegel>nail, ssegde>saide, msegden> 
maiden; OE. weg >ME. wei, legde>leide, regn> 
rein, heg (hay) >hei; WS. grseg, Angl. greg> 
grei, LateOE. xhta, ehta> eight. To these 
ai and ei diphthongs consort similar diphthongs 
in words of French origin. Even in ME. ai and 
ei became very similar and a complete fusion 
of the two diphthongs followed, which is 
evinced by the fact that ai (ay) is written in 
many words which really should have ei, as 
way, rain. Regarding the later development of 



110 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

the sounds, the views diverge 1 and the accounts 
of the older writers on the sounds do not always 
agree. In a grammar published in France in 
1595 English a, ai, ay, ea, ei, ey, are compared 
to French e. Other authors from the same 
time still insist on the pronunciation of ai and ei 
as a diphthong. In any case ai (ei) in its later 
development has become identical with the 
sound resulting from ME. a (see §102). Thus 
in the present standard pronunciation tail, rain, 
way, pay, reign, convey have the same sound 
(ei) as name; before r the sound is also the 
same (§) in fair, their, heir, as in care. 

§111. From a-{-g and a-\-w, sometimes from 
a+/, is developed a diphthong an, often written 
aw; OE. dragan>drauen>draw, lagu>lawe> 
law, clawe>claue>claw, hafoc>*havek>hauk 
>hawk. Before an h (the so-called ac/i-sound, 
in ME. written gh) is often developed a diph- 
thong: ME. aughte> ought OE. dhte; naught, 
OE. ndht, etc. Concerning the development of 
this diphthong in ModE. the opinions differ. 
Now a sound close to an o (Swed. d), is the rule: 
draw, law, etc., even in Romance words as cause, 
fraud. (For all, too (§102) one must surely 
presuppose an earlier stage aull). 

§112. A diphthong ou arises in ME. from 
several older sound combinations. OE. boga> 
bowe>bow, sdwan>sowen>sow, dgen>6wen> 
own; here belongs OE. ow in growan, etc. These 
diphthongs are levelled in ModE. with long 6 
(stone) and share its further development. For 
folk, toll, etc. (§105) one must presuppose an 
earlier stage foulk, toull. 

§113. ME. has also eu-diphthongs which 
are the development of different OE. combina- 



1) See Horn, "Historische neuenglische Grammatik," p. 96, 
and Jespersen, "Modern English Grammar," p. 325ff. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 111 

tions. The first element of the diphthong was 
sometimes open e, sometimes closed. The closed 
diphthong must early have shown, in pronuncia- 
tion contact with the u-sound of French loan- 
words. The development in ModE. is not com- 
pletely clear. In ModE. for the old eu as for 
the French u the pronunciation ju, earlier iu, is 
general; after certain consonants, u. Also the 
older opener diphthong §u has been identical 
with it for a couple of centuries. The spelling 
of the words belonging here usually testifies to 
the earlier history of the vowel; not seldom has 
an unhistoric orthography persevered: new, few, 
knew, duty, use, virtue, with historical orthog- 
raphy; true, with French orthography, corre- 
sponding however to OE. treowe. 

§114. H at the beginning of a word was 
already weak in OE., and during the course of 
time became weaker. In the general colloquial 
speech it was becoming silent during the last 
century, but probably has been brought to life in 
part by artificial means, and this, even in the 
case of most words of French origin, as humble, 
herb, etc. It passes as vulgar nowadays to give 
oneself liberties with regard to this sound. 

§115. A tendency makes itself felt very early 
to allow the palatal and guttural spirant gh 
(ich- and ac/i-sound) to become silent. The 
palatal sound seems even in the 16th century to 
have quite generally disappeared: might, fight. 
The fortunes of the guttural gh are more com- 
plicated. Different portions of the land seem 
to show different developments of it, and the 
standard pronunciation has adopted certain 
words with one type of pronunciation, others 
with still another. Thus, gh has disappeared in 
though, through, plough, daughter, taught, 
sought, slaughter, but has been labialized and 
has become f in tough, enough, cough, laugh. 



112 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

§116. In later ME. the voiceless spirants s, f> 
th in unstressed syllables, especially in endings, 
became voiced. 1 Thus we get a voiced spi- 
rant in the G. and Plur. ending -es, which, except 
when the preceding consonant makes this pro- 
nunciation impossible, has remained voiced in 
ModE. even after -e- has ceased to be pro- 
nounced : fishes, horses, seas, years, etc. ; so too 
in his, is, has, was, etc. Likewise of and with 
have a voiced spirant. The voiceless spirant re- 
mains in the more highly stressed adverb off, 
which originally was the same word as of. Also 
in the beginning of certain words with weak 
stress, th has become voiced: the, thou, thee, 
thine, that, though. 

§117. The r sound has become very weak in 
the normal South English pronunciation of 
ModE., and has lost every trace of trilling. The 
sound is heard plainly only before vowels, other- 
wise it is reduced to a so-called "vocal murmur," 
and often disappears completely after having 
exerted a powerful modifying influence upon 
the sound of the preceding vowel. An /, too, has 
become silent in certain positions: half, calf, 
talk, folk, should, would. In the first half of 
the 17th century, w disappears from the pro- 
nunciation when before r: write; somewhat 
later k and g became silent before n: know, 
knife, gnaw. The orthography has taken no 
notice of this change in pronunciation. 

3. DEVELOPMENT OF DECLENSION IN 
ENGLISH. 

§118. The Noun had in OE. a very richly 
developed declension, which, even though level- 
ing of forms and analogical recastings were not 



1) A similar development exists in the Prim. Germanic 
language which goes under the name of "Verner's law." 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 113 

lacking, still reflected the Prim. Germanic rela- 
tions in stem-formation and inflections. How- 
ever, even in OE. times, especially in the 
Northern dialects, we become aware of a 
strongly developed inclination to level differ- 
ences in declension. This leveling tendency 
soon makes headway, and after the fall of the 
comparatively conservative WS. literary lan- 
guage with its traditions, when the spoken lan- 
guage comes to its right in literature, we soon see 
the amazing effects of form-leveling. Though 
little more than a century lies between the last 
monuments of the WS. literary language and 
the East Midland Ormulum, the simplification 
of the declension is enormous. 

§119. In OE. declension the inflectional end- 
ing in -s was certainly very general, but nothing 
in the classical West Saxon foreshadows the 
fact that this ending was ordained to become 
universal in the later stage of the language. 
-s as an ending is not found among the femi- 
nines; the G. Sing, of most masculines and 
neuters, on the contrary, ended in -es, the N. 
Plur. of most strong masculines had the 
ending -as. On the other hand the strong 
neuters and feminines in this case end in a 
vowel or are without ending. Even in OE. we 
can observe how the endings -es and -as spread 
outside the territory where they are etymo- 
logically justifiable. Thus the ending -as occurs 
in WS. in the N. A. Plur. of i- and w-stems: 
wyrmas, feldas, sunas; likewise many conso- 
nantal stems show this ending very early: 
f&deras. The Northern dialects are more ex- 
treme in this, especially Northumbrian, where 
the development has gone farthest. The ending 
-es in the G. Sing, has spread even more rapidly. 
In the Northumbrian texts, especially in the 
Northern variety, this ending is very usual 



114 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

among the feminines: dedes, tides, sdules (G. 
of sdwol soul), etc., and even in late WS. we 
occasionally meet forms as helpes, sorges; like- 
wise G. in -es is found in words inflected weak, 
as eages, eares. 

§120. Leveling and analogical formations in 
declensions were mightily furthered by the pho- 
netic development during the period of transi- 
tion from OE. to ME. Then vowels in un- 
stressed end-syllables were weakened to e. An 
inflectional n-final was silent first of all in 
Northumbrian, very early also in Midland; the 
Southern was more conservative. One easily 
sees what destruction these sound changes 
must have brought to the declensions. That 
powerful support which the weak declension 
had in its -n fell away, and vocalic differences 
which in the declension of the feminines was 
the sole characteristic for most cases, disap- 
peared utterly. N. Sing, cam and Plur. cara 
became, together with G. D. A. Sing., simply 
care. N. tunge has at its side oblique cases 
identical in form, in place of OE. tungan. This 
e-final which through the above named sound 
changes became very common, appears in many 
Nominative forms, especially in most of the 
long-syllable feminines, which in OE. had no 
ending in the N. Sing. OE. synn, dsed, lav, brycg 
give in ME. sinne, dede, lore, brigge. The same 
~e appears in these words even in A. and D. 
Sing. Among words which in N. Sing, have 
no e, in ME. the D. is without ending. This 
cannot be explained by the OE. ending -e be- 
coming silent purely phonetically, but rather 
rests on the fact that the Accusative form re- 
placed the Dative. In isolated formula-like 
expressions such as to bedde, to grounde, on 
hande, however, the old L>. in -e still lived for 
a long time. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 115 

§121. When, thus, because of the phonetic 
development, the most of the declension-forms 
have been leveled, it is perfectly natural that 
the two endings 1 which were saved in the 
general confusion, -as and -es, and which even 
in OE. had won ground outside their original 
territory, should quickly continue their march 
of victory. Here, too, a leveling took place, in 
that a was reduced to e, so that in ME. we 
have to do with only one ending, -es. 

About the year 1200, this ending -es as Plur. 
sign is already especially common. We say 
plural sign, for although originally confined to 
the N. and A. Plur., -es became before long 
rather a number than a case sign. We meet it 
among neuters: wordes, werkes; among the 
feminines: dedes, handes, and among words 
which in OE. were inflected weak: names, times. 
As usual is the ending -es in the G. Sing. There 
too it occurs in words of all genders and de- 
clensions : sinnes, worldes (f ) ; names, hertes 
(weak), etc. 

The Northern and Midland dialects as early as 
in the 13th century use -es as G. and Plur. ending 
to the same or almost the same extent as in 
current English. The Ormulum, which comes 
from about 1200, reminds one in decelension 
of ModE. One may conclude from this what a 
powerful disintegration the old inflections have 
experienced during the centuries immediately 
preceding. The Southern dialects are far more 
conservative; even in the 14th century we still 
meet -e as ending for G, Sing. Fern., and -en 
as Plur. of not a few words. 

§122. During the ME. period -es became 
universal in G. Sing., as also in the normal 

1) The ending "-urn" in the D. Plur. had already become 
weakened in OE. "-un," "-on," "-an," and lost the "-n" 
when the weak declension did. 



116 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

Plur. Toward the close of the ME. period e 
became silent (except after sibilants : fishes) ; 
by then, s had become voiced (cf. §116), The 
originally phonetic alternation of a voiceless 
spirant (/*) when final and the voiced spirant (v) 
when intervocalic, still occurs (even after the 
vowel of the ending has become silent) in ModE., 
to distinguish between the Sing, wife and Plur. 
wives; life-lives; thief -thieves; loaf-loaves, etc.;, 
likewise in the pronunciation in house-houses 
and path-paths, etc. In many words anal- 
ogy has introduced the voiceless spirant even 
in the plural: hoofs, deaths, etc. The G. 
has regularly been brought into direct conform- 
ity with the N.; wife's, life's, etc. Yet in 
older ModE. we meet Genitives like wives, 
etc. In Plur. certain remnants of the older in- 
flections w r ere preserved, of which a few still live 
in our own time. If we examine the so-called 
irregularly formed plurals in a ModE. gram- 
mar, it is as a rule very easy to recognize the 
OE. declensions of which these constitute iso- 
lated remains. Among the consonant stems, 
the old plural characterized by umlaut still lives 
in foot-feet, goose-geese, tooth-teeth, louse-lice, 
mouse-mice, man-men, woman-women. A rem- 
nant of the old weak declension is found in 
oxen. N. Plur. of OE. cild, child, was cild 
or cildru. The present plural is an adaptation 
of the latter form according to the paradigm 
of the weak declension. A contamination of 
various inflectional types occurs in brethren, 
which yet exists in a metaphorical sense; the 
usual plural form is brothers. An archaic 
plural of cow was kine; the usual form is cows. 
A relic of the old neuter inflection is pre- 
served in forms such as sheep and deer, where 
the plural is not distinguished from the singular 
in form. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 117 

§123. Parallel to the decay of the old system 
of declensions, the feeling for the grammatical 
gender of nouns gradually became vague. Even 
in OE. the gender of a word is sometimes doubt- 
ful; the northern variety of the Northumbrian 
dialect in the 10th century shows a very great 
insecurity in this regard. Since the forms of 
the adjective and the articles were very much 
reduced in early ME., grammatical gender lost 
one of its strongest supports and soon sank into 
oblivion. The Ormulum stands very near to 
ModE. as regards gender. The ModE. concep- 
tion of gender is based on entirely different 
principles from the old Germanic and Indo- 
European. 1 Only personal names, depending 
upon sex, are masculine or feminine, i. e., they 
are represented by the pronouns he and she. 
Names of animals are in the main neuter, and 
are replaced by it. Yet in colloquial language 
there is a well defined tendency to make cer- 
tain animal-names masculine and others femi- 
nine. In several of the higher orders of animals 
the genders are distinguished. Names of ob- 
jects are neuter; the poetic language, however, 
makes use of numerous personifications, as, to 
a certain degree, does the colloquial language. 

Several historians of the language have, 
charmed by admiration for the rich form sys- 
tem of the old Germanic languages, considered 
the development of the English as a lamentable 
degeneration. We do not share this point of 
view. Modern English is in a position to ex- 
press the same logical relations and nuances 
of thought as OE.; it does so with simpler and 
less cumbersome means. And in the old system 
of gender, in spite of all the talk about the 
poetic conceptions embodied in the same, 
we cannot see anything other than a useless 



1) See Sweet, "New English Grammar," section 1953ff. 



118 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

burden, the removal of which can only tend to 
advance a language. 

§124. The Adjective in OE. had, as in the 
German of today, two sorts of inflection, strong 
and weak. The choice of strong or weak de- 
pended upon syntactic relations. Very early 
this wealth of form fell prey to great reductions. 
When inflectional -n became silent and the 
vowels in suffixes were leveled, the forms of 
the weak declension were reduced to one, which 
ends in -e. Even the strong inflection falls into 
decay; it seems as if — of course unconsciously 
— the idea was awakened that the thought is 
just as clearly and unequivocally expressed 
where the sentence relation is denoted by the 
noun alone, as where each adjectival attribute 
is provided with case-endings. And in the same 
way is congruence, often so highly praised, a 
superfluous ballast which is not necessary in 
understanding the connection of words. ModE. 
all good old men's works expresses the same 
thing as the Latin opera virorum omnium bono- 
rum veterum and expresses it just as clearly 
but in a far simpler and consequently more 
practical way. 1 

The Ormulum has preserved of the old adj. 
inflection only a strong plural form in ~e and 
a form likewise ending in -e for all the cases 
of the weak declension. Chaucer's adj. inflec- 
tion agrees with this. Adjectives which in the 
uninflected form end in -e, are thus even in 
ME. invariable. Then when the final -e has 
become silent, there remains as result the ModE. 
uninflected adjective. Thanks to this lack of 
inflection, the Mod E. Adj. great is in condition 
to express the quality of greatness alone, un- 
hampered by any qualifying conceptions, whilst 



1) Cf. Jespersen, "Studier over engelske Kasus," p. 17. 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 119 

Latin magnus indissolubly unites ideas of sin- 
gular, masculine and nominative. 

The ModE. comparison (great, greater, great- 
est) is a direct continuation of the OE. Even 
in earlier ME. a paraphrastic mode of compari- 
son formed with more and most occurs beside it. 
Originally both sorts of comparison were used 
without any distinction; now the paraphrastic 
comparison is used chiefly with longer adjec- 
tives, the older comparison is preferred with 
shorter adjectives. A number oi so-called 
irregular forms of comparison still exist 
in ModE. better-best, worse-worst, more- 
most, less-least, etc., also the umlaut-forms 
elder-eldest beside older-oldest. 

§125. Among the Pronouns, too, far- 
reaching changes have taken place. The per- 
sonal pronouns are the best preserved. Even 
there, however, many changes have been intro- 
duced. The dual forms soon disappear. The 
old genitive forms of the 1 and 2 pers. pronoun 
disappear in ME. and are replaced by the Pos- 
sessive Pronoun, which is nearly related. The 
pronoun for the First Person Sing, has in OE. 
the form ic. This form gives rise in ME., as in 
the case of most pronominal forms, to many 
variant forms depending on dialect and stress. 
The form which has won entrance into the 
written language is /. The plural form we, 
with also the D. A. me, us, lives in ModE., nat- 
urally, with altered pronounciation. pu and pe 
have also regularly developed to ModE. thou 
and thee, which nowadays belong exclusively 
to highly archaic style, and elsewhere are re- 
placed by the pronoun for the 2nd Pers. Plur. 
OE. ge in 2nd Pers. Plur. has been developed 
to ye, which form began even in earliest ModE. 
to give way to the form of the oblique cases, 
you, which corresponds to OE. eow. Of the 



120 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

ModE. forms for the 3rd personal pronoun, he, 
his, her, him, are to be derived without diffi- 
culty from OE. he, his, hire, him. The old 
Accusatives have, as in the 1 and 2 Pers., given 
way before the Dative. ModE. it corresponds 
to OE. hit; the loss of the initial consonant is 
caused by the lack of stress. The G. its is a 
new formation which replaced the older his, 
now confined to the masculine. The form is 
very rare even in Shakespeare. ModE. she is 
probably a development of the OE. demonstra- 
tive form seo ; yet the history of the word is not 
clearly traceable. In the Plur., the OE. forms 
have given way to the forms they, their, them, 
which show Scandinavian influence. In daily 
speech the forms ot the Personal Pronouns are 
often reduced to the point of being unrecogniz- 
able. 

Possessive Pronouns have developed double 
forms in Middle and Modern English, of which 
the shorter, my, thy, our, your, is used attribu- 
tively, the longer, mine, thine, ours, yours, ab- 
solutely. The ending in ours, yours, is probably 
to be explained by analogy to his. Likewise to 
the genitives her and their, have been formed 
the absolute forms hers, theirs. In poetical style 
sometimes mine and thine occur also attribu- 
tively. 

In the pronominal formations with -self occur 
two different processes of formation, in that 
partly the possessive pronoun, partly the 
oblique case of the Personal Pronoun are com- 
pounded with self: myself, yourself (-ves), our- 
selves, thyself, but himself, herself, itself, them- 
selves. 

§126. The forms of the other pronouns un- 
dergo numerous reductions in ME. Chaucer 
has already arrived in the main at the ModE. 
standpoint, Only who-whose-whom exhibit 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 121 

case-forms; a difference in gender continues 
only in who-what. In the other pronouns, dif- 
ferent forms are to be found solely to express 
number. The forms of the article were soon 
leveled; the result is the indeclinable the. The 
neutral form OE. ]>set, becomes detached from 
the article and gives rise to a new demonstra- 
tive pronoun that. As a plural form of this pro- 
noun, those is used, which replaced the older 
\q (OE. }>d) and which corresponds to OE. ]>ds. 
This last named form was in OE. the Plur. of 
}>es, Ipeos, \>is. Of the Sing, forms of this pro- 
noun, only the neuter this has remained and 
like that began to be used as attributive even to 
masculine and feminine words. This has in 
ModE. the plural these, the origin of which is 
not completely clear. OE. hwilc has become 
ModE. which, swilc (swylc) >such. Of other pro- 
nouns named in §50, sum> regularly some, 
&>nig>any, selc>each {every is the result of 
ever-\-each). 

4. DEVELOPMENT OF THE VERBAL 
INFLECTION IN ENGLISH. 

§127. The changes which the English verbal 
inflection undergoes in ME. and ModE. times are 
not so far-reaching as the changes in the de- 
clensions. While the nominal inflection in 
ModE. is something quite different from that 
in OE., we may easily recognize in the ModE. 
verbal conjugation most of the characteristic 
marks of the OE. Conjugation. Of course the 
language has not stood still here; the changes 
are great enough, especially in the stem-forma- 
tion. 

We shall first confine ourselves to the Per- 
sonal endings of the Verb. After the leveling 
of the OE. suffix vowels, the ME. verbal-endings 



122 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

in the Pres. Ind. are: Sing. 1. -e, 2. -est, 3. -eth, 
Plur. eth. These are the forms prevalent in 
the South of England (e. g. in Ancren Riwle). 
In Midland and Northern the conjugation un- 
dergoes two important changes. Even in OE. 
the 3. Pers. Sing, frequently ends in -es in North- 
ern, an ending, the origin of which has been 
variously explained. This ending during the 
ME. period pressed further Southward. Yet 
in Chaucer it is very rare, Caxton has likewise 
-eth, but in the 16th century -es becomes gen- 
eral in the standard language as it may have 
been already earlier in the colloquial language 
of London. The present standard English knows 
no other ending for the 3rd Pers. Sing, than -es 
or -s, the sound value of which corresponds to 
that of the -(e) s endings in the declension; in 
archaic-religious and poetic style forms in -eth 
are occasionally used. 

§128. The Plur. Pres. Ind. is formed differ- 
ently in the three chief dialects in ME. While 
the Southern dialect retains -eth, Midland re- 
places it by a form in -en, wherein we see 
probably a corresponding subjunctive form; 
the Pret. with its 3. plur. in -en has probably 
also contributed to the change in the 
Present. In Old Northumbrian the ending -as 
or -es in Pres. Plur. was quite usual. Also in 
ME., verbs in the Northern dialects often have 
in this form the ending -es, which is dropped 
in different positions. In older ME., conse- 
quently, bindeth is the Southern, binden the 
Midland, and bind (es) the Northern form for 
the Plur. Pres. Ind. The victory belonged to 
the Midland form, whose -n however gradually 
became silent. In Chaucer binde occurs as well 
as binden, even in Elizabeth's time plurals in 
-en occur, but these are only isolated remains 
of an older period. In the normal written Ian- 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 123 

guage -n has disappeared; the final -e has be- 
come silent and e in the ending es has shared 
the same fate, unless preceded by a sibilant, 
and then lastly, the form for the 2nd Pres. Sing, 
disappears from the living language; so in the 
Pres. Ind., only two forms remain: 3. Sing. 
binds, 1. 2. Sing, and Plur. bind. 

The OE. forms in the Pres. Subjunctive, Sing. 
binde, Plur. binden, in ModE. regularly give 
bind. The rare Subj. has thus in ModE. one 
form for all persons. 

As to endings, the strong and weak preterites 
are identical in ModE. The OE. Plur. ending 
-un, -on has weakened to -en, -e, and finally has 
fallen away. In the 14th century, 2. Pers. Sing, 
begins to adopt even in the strong Pret., the 
ending -est in agreement with the weak Pret. 
and with the Pres. If we leave the 2. Sing, 
aside, the Pret. has in ModE. only one form: 
bound, loved. A form for the Pret. Subj. dif- 
fering from the Ind. occurs in ModE. only in the 
verb to be: Ind. / was, Subj. / were. 

§129. The infinitive ends in OE. in -an, conse- 
quently in ME. regularly in -embinden. The 
inflectional -n had already been dropped in 
Old North, in many cases; the ending of the 
infinitive is there -a, ME. -e. Later -n disappears 
even in the Southern dialects. In Chaucer, in- 
finitives are to be found in -en, as well as in e. 
When finally -e became silent, the infinitive was 
without suffix: bind. The socalled inflected in- 
finitive, OE. to faranne, is levelled during the 
ME. period with the infinitive proper. 

The Pres. Part, in OE. ends in -ende, which 
form is retained in Midland in ME. times. In 
Southern, next of all -inde is developed from 
-ende. About 1200 occurs a form in -inge, which 
is to be considered either as a purely phonetic 
development of -inde, or as a levelling with the 



124 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

verbal substantive in -ing (cf. German abstracts 
in -ling). In any case these forms are levelled 
after end-e has become silent, and the-ing form 
has been adopted in Standard English. This ex- 
plains the wide use of the ModE. form in -ing, 
which plainly bears witness to the fact that 
adjectival as well as nominal elements are pres- 
ent in it. 

The Past Part, of strong verbs had in OE. 
the ending -en. In ME. -n is often dropped. In 
ModE. the strong verbs have now -en, now are 
without ending. It is very difficult to formulate 
a rule regarding it, since the forces of analogy 
play a great part in it. The Past Part, of the 
weak verbs ends in ModE. in -(e)d or -t and has 
been regularly developed from the OE. forms. 
The prefix ge-, which in OE. was very common 
in the Past. Part., lives in ME. in the form i- or 
*/-. The Northern dialects lose this very early. 
Likewise we do not find it in the Ormulum. In 
Chaucer the prefix is still fairly common 
(yeomen, yf alien) and occurs even in verbs of 
French origin (y served). The older ModE. 
written language knows only a few remnants 
of this Past Part, sign, as usual in OE. as in 
German of today (yclad, yclept). 

The umlaut in 2. and 3. Sing. Pres. Ind. which 
so often occurred in OE. — especially common in 
WS., but very rare in the Northern dialects — 
gradually gives way during the following pe- 
riod, and the vowel of the Infinitive is intro- 
duced into the entire Present. Likewise, later, 
the language gives up the syncopations of the 
same forms, so usual in WS.; helpe-hilpst, 
hilp]> is replaced by helpe-helpest-helpe)>; ModE. 
help-helpest-helps. Yet we find in Chaucer not 
a few syncopated forms as : 3 Sing, bint, sit. 

§130. In the stem-formation of the strong 
verb, great changes have taken place since OE. 



OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 125 

times, which have given the stem of many a 
verb quite a different appearance from its for- 
mer one, but which do not completely disguise 
the characteristic peculiarities of the old Ablaut 
classes. Thus we recognize in drive-drove-driv- 
en, rise-rose-risen, write-wrote-written the OE. 
1st Ablaut-class (§53) ; in freeze-froze-frozen— 
since grammatical change has been given up 
everywhere in ModE. — occurs, although much 
blurred, the theme of the 2nd Ablaut-class. The 
3rd is represented by drink-drank-drunk, sing- 
sang-sung, etc. Most of the verbs of the 4th and 
5th classes are very much changed; fairly well 
preserved are bear- (bare) bore-born (e), 4th 
class, and give-gave-given, 5th class. To the 6th 
Ablaut-class belong, e. g., shake-shook-shaken, 
take-took-taken, and to the originally redupli- 
cating classes: fall-fell-fallen, grow-grew-grown, 
know-knew-known, etc. 

§131. When we account for some of the most 
important changes which the English strong 
verb has undergone during the period of its 
development, we take no account of the changes 
which are of purely phonetic nature and thus 
may be explained by the general laws of Eng- 
lish sound-development. We must confine our- 
selves to the shifting of the original relations, 
which depends upon analogy, i. e., on the mutual 
influence of words and of inflectional types. 

First and foremost it should be mentioned 
that not a few verbs, which in OE. are inflected 
strong, during the later history of the language 
have adopted a weak Pret. Even in OE. times 
we meet a weak Pret. slsepte from slsepan, to 
sleep, beside the strong (reduplicating) slep. 
Chaucer knows slepte as well as slep. In ModE. 
the verb is inflected weak: sleep-slept-slept. 
Likewise the verbs Isetan, to let, and wepan, to 
weep, originally reduplicating, are now weak: 



126 ELEMENTS OP THE HISTORY 

let-let-let; weep-wept-wept In later ME. and 
even in ModE. many shifts from the strong to 
the weak conjugation have taken place. The 
OE. strong verb climban, to climb, had yet in 
earliest ModE. the Pret. clomb; now it is regu- 
larly climb-climbed. Likewise the strong in- 
flection in OE. helpan and meltan has given way 
to the weak inflection : help-helped, melt-melted. 
Many other verbs have gone the same road. On 
the other hand occur examples of a contrary 
shifting. OE. stician-sticode is now inflected 
strong: stick-stuck-stuck ; here it is probably 
sting that has set the example for analogical 
formation. In the same way English wear- 
wore-worn is declined strong to agree with 
bear-bore-born, tear-tore-torn, swear-swore- 
sworn. In OE. the verb was weak: werian-werede 
By analogy to know- (knew) -known, for in- 
stance, show has adopted the strong Part. 
shown; the Pret. is weak, showed. The OE. form 
for this word was sceawian-sceawode. It is 
noteworthy that even a verb from the French 
has adopted a strong inflection: strive-strove- 
striven, which thereby has allied itself to the 1st 
strong ablaut class. 

§132. In the strong verb itself come two re- 
markable form-levelling processes. The first 
and more important, which has a complete par- 
allel in German, as in colloquial but not literary 
Swedish, is the adoption of one vowel for all 
forms of the Pret. OE., like the other Old Ger- 
manic languages, had in most Ablaut classes 
one vowel in the 1. and 3. Sing. Ind. and another 
in the 2 Sing, and the Plur. Ind. and in the 
Subj. Pret. band-bunde-band ; bundon; bunde- 
bunden. Levelling had begun even in ME., but 
only after Chaucer's time was it adopted on a 
large scale. If we compare Mod. E. strong verbs 
with the corresponding verbs in OE., we see that 



OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 127 

in certain verbs the vowel of the Pret. Sing, is 
introduced also in the Plur.; in others, again, the 
vowel of the Plur. has penetrated into the Sing. 
The first is the case, for example, in drove, rose, 
shone, smote, strode, wrote from drive, rise, 
shine, smite, stride, write; likewise in began, 
drank, rang, sang, sank, sprang, swam, from be- 
gin, etc. But the cases are not very rare where 
the whole preterite has adopted the vowel which 
originally belonged to the plural. This is the 
case in bit, slid, from bite, slide; likewise clung, 
shrunk, stung, spun, from cling, etc., and bound, 
found, ground, wound, from bind, etc. 

Matters became more involved on account of 
the second great form-levelling, the mutual in- 
fluence which Pret. and Past Part, exercised on 
each other. Plur. Pret. and Part, had in many 
cases the same Ablaut vowel. The Plur. Pret. 
forms received thereby mnemonic aid, which as- 
suredly assisted in the not infrequent expulsion 
of the Sing. form. But there were also verbs 
in which the Pret. and Part, did not have 
the same vowel. In not a few of these verbs, 
however, in ModE. the Pret. agrees with the 
Part, with regard to the Ablaut vowel. Here it is 
either the vowel of the Part, which obtains in the 
Pret., as in bore, broke, spoke, from bear, break, 
speak; the old forms bare, brake, spake occur yet 
archaically; or the Pret. form has prevailed, 
as in shone, stood, sat, from shine, stand, sit. 

In ME. and older ModE. the Ablaut relation- 
ships were in many points not in agreement 
with the present colloquial and written lan- 
guage. It may be especially mentioned that 
many of the analogical forms met with in earlier 
ModE. have since been lost. 

§133. The development of the Weak Verb 
does not demand very exhaustive treatment. 
Both of the OE. chief classes of weak verbs were 



128 ELEMENTS OF THE HISTORY 

clearly distinguished in ME. in the Southern: 
tellen-luvien. North and Midland, even in early 
ME. had given up every distinction, in that the i 
of the second conjugation had been dropped. 
All English verbs, with the exception of the so- 
called irregular verbs, thus came to be inflected 
alike in the Present. 

The weak preterites were usually developed 
regularly and without any disturbing cross in- 
fluences. Remarkable are the numerous syn- 
copations of middle vowels and the consequent 
frequent vowel shortening in the Pret. (keep- 
kept, etc.) and the preference for the Pret. end- 
ing-t which occurs in many words which orig- 
inally had -edisent, went, girt for the OE. sends, 
wende, girde. ModE. has preserved a great 
number of weak verbs whose difference between 
Pres. and Pret. vowel comes from OE. : seek- 
sought, buy-bought, think-thought, etc. 

§134. Among ModE. verbs, which are not 
connected with any of the usual conjugation- 
types and which, therefore, go under the name 
of "irregular," should be mentioned the Preteri- 
tive Presents: can, dare, shall, must (OE. Pret. 
moste), ought (<OE. Pret. dhte), and the auxil- 
iary verbs will, have and be. 



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